Sovereign Reason And Other Studies In

Ernest Nagel

Sovereign Reason

AND OTHER STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois

Copyright 1954 by The Free Press, a corporation

Printed in the United States of America

#

Designed by Sidney Solomon

To Sidney Hook

Contents

PAGE

Introduction 9

1. Malicious Philosophies of Science 17

2. Recent Philosophies of Science 36

3. Philosophy and the American Temper 50

4. Charles Peirce’s Guesses at the Riddle 58

5. Charles S. Peirce, Pioneer of Modern Empiricism 89

6. Dewey’s Theory of Natural Science loi

7. Dewey’s Reconstruction of Logical Theory 1 18

8. Reflections on Some Logical and Metaphysical Themes

in Dewey’s Philosophy 141

9. Alfred North Whitehead r 50

10. The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell r6i

11. Mr. Russell on Meaning and Truth 190

12. The Basis of Human Knowledge 21 1

13. Eddington’s Philosophy of Physical Science 216

14. Probability and the Theory of Knowledge 225

15. Sovereign Reason 266

I <5. The Perspectives of Science and the Prospects of Men 296

Bibliographical Note 309

Index 3 * *

Introduction

The sixteen essays in this collection were written for different
occasions, and have been previously published. They are re-
printed here with only minor editorial changes. They do not con-
stitute a systematic discussion of a single philosophic problem, nor
do they exhibit a consecutive development of a single philosophic
theme.

This collection of papers nevertheless does deal with a set of
related problems. All save one of the essays are critical studies of
contemporary philosophers who have been occupied, in one way
or another, with the content or method of modem science, and who
have thereby sought to illumine the nature and operations of human
reason. These essays thus constitute an evaluation of various pro-
posals by influential writers for resolving many paramount issues
in the philosophy of science. Whatever unity the contemporary
philosophy of science may have in respect to the subject matters
and the problems falling into its province, I can also claim for this
book. The unity is clearly not a tightly knit one. It is indeed possible
to subsume the problems treated by writers on the philosophy of

[9]

[ lo ] Introduction

science under four diverse though related types. The studies in
this collection touch upon all four types, since each thinker dis-
cussed has concerned himself with one or more of them. The reader
may find helpful the following brief description of the major divi-
sions into which contemporary philosophic commentary on science
can be conveniently classified.

The relation of theory to gross experience— of ‘^abstract reason”
to the ‘‘nature” encountered in ordinaiy perception and overt action
—is a theme that is as old as western thought. Philosophers have dis-
cussed it in technical language, and poets have sung variations on it.

Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy^

There was an awful rainbow once in heaven.

We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.

Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,

Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,

Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—

Unweave a rainbow, as it erewHlle made
The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.

It is a theme covering problems which became acute with the de-
velopment of mathematical physics tliree centuries ago; and the
character of current theories in the natural sciences, possessing con-
tents that are apparently quite “alien” to the manifest features of
experience, has augmented its importance. It is a theme to which
contemporary philosophers of science have devoted much atten-
tion, so that a good fraction of recent philosophic literature is .by
explicit design a critique of scientific “abstractions.” A well-nigh
continuous spectrum of diverse proposals is available for making
explicit the ways in which theoretical concepts and theoretical
objects in the sciences are related to the materials of familiar experi-
ence, The general problem these proposals seek to solve is perhaps
the most persistent and central philosophic issue under current
discussion.

The nature and basis of reliable knowledge is the theme of a
second group of problems. Genuine knowledge was once widely
identified with absolutely certain knowledge, and this identification
continues to be made by many contemporary thinkers. Some of
them claim to achieve such knowledge by way of immediate sen-

Introduction [ ii ]

sation, others by way of private intellectual “insight,” still others
by way of a special mode of reasoning. On the other hand, there
are also many thinkers who do not equate knowledge with infalli-
bility; and by these the conclusions of the sciences— usually, though
not invariably, the conclusions of the physical sciences— are often
taken to be the supreme examples of warranted belief. Which if
any of these competing claims has merit, what the grounds are
for the alleged reliability of scientific knowledge, how probable
inferences are to be interpreted and “justified,” and what are the
principles underlying the valid estimation of evidence, are focal
questions in contemporary philosophy of science.

A third group of problems is generated by the perennial quest
for a total view of the universe. In the opinion of many men, the
various special sciences are incapable of dealing with “ultimate”
questions, so that answers to these must be sought elsewhere:

Beyond the bright searchlights of science.

Out of sigly: of the windows of sense.

Old riddles still bid us defiance

Old questions of Why and Whence.

Some philosophers have sought to resolve such riddles by construct-
ing speculative schemes of cosmic evolution which purport to “ex-
plain” the emergence and destiny of every occurrence in nature on
the basis of primordial principles of unilinear development. Other
writers have tried to master such riddles by advancing some “higher
synthesis” of the detailed findings of the special sciences, so that
the restricted theories of the latter are the supposed consequences
of an inclusive “philosophic” theory about the foundations of the
universe. On the other hand, many philosophers have rejected as
misplaced such efforts at obtaining a comprehensive view of things.
Some of them, however, have adopted what to them appears as the
sound method for achieving this objective, by devising systems of
interrelated categorial distinctions that ostensibly formulate the
“pervasive traits” of existence. Such systems are alleged to have
the value of a connected and complete “map” of the universe, so
that every character displayed in nature must necessarily illustrate
one of the categories in the system. Accordingly, such categories
are often claimed to formulate the ultimate principles of intelligi-
bility— the basic intellectual tools for criticizing and evaluating the

[ 12] Introduction

conclusions of specialized scientific inquiries. It will be evident that
most of the issues of traditional metaphysics find their place in this
third group of questions discussed in current philosophies of science.

Finally, there is a class of problems dealing with the relations
of science and society. Some of these problems are concerned with
the social determinants and the social consequences of the scientific
enterprise; others are concerned with the bearings of scientific
findings on systems of individual and social value. Many questions
in this group are of a forthright empirical character, and those who
seek to resolve them must abide— as they frequently do— by the
canons of historical and sociological investigation. Other questions,
however, are not so easily resolved even in principle, since their
very formulation often depends on antecedent commitments on
issues falling into the three previously mentioned groups of prob-
lems. At one extreme are those writers who approach these ques-
tions from the perspective of the dictum: “Science carries us into
zones of speculation, where there is no habitable city for the life
of man.” At the other extreme are commtntators on human affairs
who see in the patterns of activity which physical science finds
pervasive throughout nature, the true models for the organization
of human society. In any event, in no area of the philosophy of
science are the issues so complex and so heatedly debated as in this
one.

The major themes listed in this catalogue are recurrent in the
history of thought, and are all important. They enter into all
reflective thought or action which is controlled by some conception
of the character of human reason and by some notions concerning
the place of man in nature. They are themes, moreover, that are
intimately related to the actual practice of science; and scientists
have frequently found it imperative, for the sake of advancing
their own work, to clarify some of the issues involved in them.
The need for considering broad methodological and substantive
questions is especially acute in periods of scientific development,
such as ours is, in which revolutionary changes in theoretical out-
look are taking place. Such developments tend to upset deeply
rooted beliefs concerning the structure of the physical universe as
well as those concerning human behavior; and those developments
provoke, in consequence, a reexamination of the basis of cognitive
certitude and of the accepted criteria of intelligibility. The themes

Introduction [ 13 1

cited are accordingly not of exclusive concern to professional phi-
losophers. Philosophically minded scientists as well as professional
philosophers have contributed to their analysis.

There are, however, ways of conceiving and attacking problems
associated with those themes that are sterile and unilluminating, just
as there are approaches to theme which are fruitful and clarifying.
Much contemporary philosophy of science does not merit these
latter characterizations, for it does not always satisfy the mimmal
conditions that philosophic analysis must meet if it is to be infor-
mative and illuminating. No question in the philosophy of science
is significant, if its formulation is so general that specific evidence
drawn from identifiable subject matter is never relevant to the
evaluation of any proposed answer to the question. No discussion
is pertinent to a problem, if the discussion is conducted out of all
relations with the context that fixes the sense of the problem. No
mode of attack on a problem is fruitful which generates for every
puzzle it pretends to solve a fresh difficulty that is a duplicate of
the original one. And no proposed answer to a problem is clarifying,
if it assumes an absolutely completed body of knowledge as a
condition for effectively resolving the question. Conformity to
these requirements is undoubtedly not a sufficient condition for
valuable work in the philosophy of science, but failure to conform
to them seriously qualifies the merits of any analysis in this domain
of philosophy.

A few examples of doubtfully valuable contributions to the
philosophy of science, which illustrate each of the major themes
cited above, will give point to these dicta. A number of techniques
have been proposed for exhibiting the relation of the abstractions
of science— such as “points” and “straight lines” in geometry, or
“instants” and “atoms” in physics— to the material of crude experi-
ence. Proposals like those of Russell and Whitehead, for example,
that ignore the concrete ways in which scientific abstractions are
employed in various contexts of inquiry, and that substitute for
one set of theoretical notions another set of equally remote formal
constructions, throw little if any light on scientific procedure. Such
proposals may be important contributions to some branch of formal
study, and are undoubtedly fascinating exhibitions of intellectual
virtuosity. They do not provide helpful answers to the difficulties
that initiated the analysis.

[ 14 ] Introduction

Secondly, it is significant to ask, for example, why under speci-
fied conditions men make incorrect perceptual Judgments or draw
unwarranted conclusions. Such questions are in principle resolvable,
for they are concerned with the identification and the elimination
of sources of possible error in determinate contexts. But there is
no general “problem of error” in the pursuit of knowledge. It is
not rewarding to pursue limited questions like the one Just cited,
if inquiry into them is based on a radical scepticism concerning the
very possibility of ever making correct Judgments. It is not fruit-
ful to do this, or to raise in wholesale fashion a “problem” about
the “existence of an external world”— as Reichenbach, Russell, and
others have in effect done— if only because no identifiable context
of inquiry can be specified in which such “problems” can be co-
herently formulated.

Thirdly, the quest for a comprehensive view of things can be
the pursuit of an intelligible and worthy ideal. It is an ideal to
which various special departments of study are progressively con-
tributing. It is an ideal whose realizatiorv can perhaps never be
more than approximate, though even partial realizations of it, es-
pecially when embodied in great literature, may serve as general
directives for human effort. But when the quest for a total view of
nature is so conducted that it can terminate only in a set of “ulti-
mate” categories which are compatible with every possible order
of events, or which ascribe by vague analogy to everything in na-
ture traits that are knovm to characterize only a limited sector of
it, a misleading verbal game has been substituted for a search for
genuine knowledge. In any event, the various schemes of basic
categories that have been constructed— whether by Peirce or by
Whitehead or by Dewey— which supposedly codify the “generic”
or “irreducible” traits of existence, have still to prove their worth
as alleged instruments either of explanation, criticism, or fruitful
classification.

Finally, the task of making explicit the import of scientific dis-
coveries for human values is a perennially important one. But that
task is radically misconceived when standards of human excellence
are alleged to be derived, or derivable, from the characters which
physical science ascribes to its postulated sub-microscopic objects.
For the context in which the predications of sub-atomic physics
ate significant, is not the context iri which Judgments concerning

Introduction [ 15 ]

human values are relevant. No amount of dialectical prestidigitation
can convert the presumably necessary conditions for the existence
of everything whatsoever, into the suiHcient conditions for the
manifestation of special human virtues.

In their commentaries on the nature and import of science,
practicing scientists as well as professional philosophers have thus
frequently obscured rather than illumined fundamental issues. It is
not altogether anomalous that scientists are not uniformly the best
interpreters of their procedures and their theoretical discoveries.
What is loosely called “scientific method” is usually a habit of work-
manship acquired by engaging in successful inquiry, rather than
a codified set of principles to which scientists exphcitly subscribe.
In fact, most workers in specialized branches of research rarely give
serious attention to methodological problems that do not contrib-
ute directly to the solution of concrete research tasks. The philos-
ophy of science which practicing scientists profess on ceremonial
and other occasions when they discuss the broader significance of
their enterprise and thtir achievements, is often but an echo of
philosophical ideas uncritically acquired in their youth. It is none-
theless the case that some of the most penetrating and clarifying
analyses of the operations of scientific intelhgence and of the broad
significance of theoretical constructions, have been the contribu-
tions of philosophically minded workers in special branches of
science. The writings of such men as Helmholtz, Mach, Hertz,
Duhem and Poincar^ to mention only a few of the illustrious dead,
provide ample evidence for this judgment.

Professional philosophers writing on science are not exempt from
the danger of becoming unwitting captives of an uncritically ac-
cepted philosophy. Philosophers are usually familiar, however, with
a variety of intellectual traditions, and they presumably have sonae
training in the criticism and the logical analysis of broad issues. This
danger is in consequence perhaps smaller in their case than it is in
the case of most specialists in the sciences. On the other hand, phi-
losophers suifer from the serious disadvantage that they frequently
possess no first-hand familiarity with the actual operations of scien-
tific inquiry or with the actual functions of scientific abstractions.
They therefore run the grave risk of propounding issues and pro-
posing solutions for them which have no conceivable bearing on any
context or phase of science. Distance from an object may make

[ i6 ] Introduction

more of it visible. But when the distance is suiEciently great, the
object may disappear in a haze, and an alleged description of it
may then be the description of a fog. Moreover, without the re-
straining control of a clear subject matter, there is often an irre-
sistable temptation to “generalize” a problem whose sense is fixed
by a definite context, to a point where the terms of the generalized
formulation no longer posses differential meanings. The “solutions”
which are then advanced for such “generalized” questions will often
be functions of the particular technique of analysis that happens to
be in favor; but suctx “solutions” will also be irrelevant to anything
that is of serious concern in the conduct of inquiry. The dangers
and pitfalls here briefly listed are of course not insurmountable;
and the writings of Peirce, Dewey, Reichenbach, Whitehead and
Russell show, despite their various limitations, how much the philos-
ophy of science owes to the analyses of professional philosophers.

The philosophy of science is a difficult branch of intellectual
analysis. It requires for its effective cultivation a rare combination
of solidly founded substantive knowledge,'" analytical and construc-
tive skill, and— not least— a sharp sense for relevance. Even those
who possess these traits in abundance do not always exhibit them to
best advantage, as the essays in this collection try to show. There
are, indeed, no uniform standards of competent workmanship which
control analyses in the philosophy of science, and which are also
binding upon those who attempt to evaluate the analyses of others.
But the best work in this domain of philosophy, so it seems to me,
has been done by men who have sought to understand human reason
by examining its operations in controlled inquiry, and who have
interpreted the meaning of theoretical constructions in terms of
their manifest functions in identifiable contexts I would like to
believe that the perspective of such a contextualistic analysis also
controls the critiques of contemporary philosophers of science con-
tained in this collection of essays.

1

Malicious Philosophies
of Science

Xhere is no substantial evidence for the widely held view that
changes in the content and standards of theoretical inquiry are
uniquely determined by changes in the economic and political
structure of society. To be sure, scientific inquiries are often ini-
tiated and subsidized by those concerned with problems of com-
merce and technology, and the manner in which scientific discov-
eries are assimiUated by a society depends on its economic and
political organization. But once a department of inquiry establishes
its traditions of workmanship, so the history of science seems to
indicate, the course of subsequent developments in it is determined
by the materials explored, by the talents and skills available, and
by the logic of theoretical investigation.

In almost every age, however, the attitudes which men assume
toward personal and social issues have been often justified by them
in terms of their understanding of the methods and latest findings
of science. Professional scientists have frequently used their special-

I>7,1

[ i8 ] Sovereign Reason

ized knowledge to buttress or criticize the institutions of their day;
but pubhcists, religious leaders, and philosophers have usually played
a more prominent role in this task of evaluating the general social
import of scientific methods and scientific theories. Such evaluations
do not, in most cases, flow from the specific character of scientific
methods or their technical achievements; they issue from the social
and religious commitments of those who make them, and are symp-
tomatic of the stresses and strains in the social scene.

In the midst of actual and impending disaster, men are inclined to
listen to any voice speaking with sufficient authority; and during
periods of social crisis, when rational methods of inquiry supply no
immediate solutions for pressing problems, spokesmen for institu-
tional and philosophic theologies find a ready audience for a sys-
tematic disparagement of the achievements of empirical science.
Ideas which the advance of knowledge had partially driven under-
ground during periods of fair social weather, are then insolently
proclaimed as panaceas for public and private ills. The assured
methods of scientific control and understanding, because they effect
no wholesale resolution of problems and because they yield no con-
clusions beyond the possibility of error and correction, are then
declared to be unsuitable guides for rational living.

The mounting economic and political tensions of our own age
have not failed to produce a literature of this type. From various
quarters— from men of science, historians of ideas, as well as out-
spoken representatives of theological systems— there has come a
flood of criticism of modern science and of the secular naturalism
which has accompanied its growth. The criticism has been neither
uniform nor consistent. But the common objective of much of it
has been the limitation of the authority of science, and the institution
of methods other than those of controlled experimentation for dis-
covering the natures and values of things. Many recent evaluations
of science have thus had an obviously malicious intent; and the pres-
ent essay will seek to determine briefly to what extent, in the case
of several influential types of philosophies of science, good sense
has been sacrificed to such malice.

I*

Undoubtedly the most solidly intrenched intellectual basis for the
current disparagement of science is a well-known but nonetheless

Malicious Philosophies of Science [ 19 ]

questionable theory of knowledge upon which experimental method
is made to rest. This type of critique starts with the familiar fact
that in many theories of the natural sciences, especially physics, the
various sensory qualities (such as colors and sounds) receive no
explicit mention, and that it is only the quantifiable traits of things
(such as mass and length) which are noticed. The immediate con-
clusion which is then drawn is that sensory qualities are not prop-
erties of objects in their own right, but are dependent on the
activity of an immaterial mind. The remainder of the argument may
then proceed along either of two lines of interpretation. According
to one of them, more common in earlier centuries than in our own,
the traits studied by the natural sciences are the only genuinely real
things, while the directly experienced qualities are only a passmg
appearance. The sights and sounds and smells of the human scene
are thus taken to have only a “subjective” existence and to be the
otiose by-products of the true executive order of nature. According
to the second interpretation, currently highly fashionable, the quali-
ties apprehended in rflaily experience are the concrete and exclusive
reality. It is these qualities which are held to constitute the intrinsic
natures of things; and since these qualities are allegedly psychic
products, it is they which are regarded as the intelligible substance
of the world. In putting to one side the qualitative character of
existence the natural sciences are consequently preoccupied with
shadowy abstractions, which have at best only a mean practical
value; and the laws which are the outcome of scientific inquiry, far
from expressing the true nature of things, fail to grasp and convey
the dynamic reality of existence.

On either interpretation, therefore, the world is split into two
discontinuous realms. One of them, the proper domain of natural
science, is a “mysterious universe” forever foreign and essentially
unintelligible to the common experience of mankind; the other, the
locus of enjoyments and values, is the theater of the mind’s activities
and creations, and is the only reality in which mind can feel confi-
dently at home. On either alternative, the human scene is endowed
with character so distinctive that the procedures of the empirical
sciences can provide no guide to it. For the controlled methods of
experimentation are held to be relevant only to the realm of abstract
quantity, so that the entire field of valuation, of deliberation and
moral choice, is exempted from tihe norms of experimental inquiry.

[ 20 ] Sovereign Reason

Qualitative reality, which by hypothesis has an inherent connection
with mind and consciousness, must therefore be explored by tech-
niques different from those employed in the positive sciences; and
in this realm, claims to truth must be subjected to canons of a radi-
cally different kind. Imagination, intuition, introspection, and modes
of emotional experience, are some of the ways which have been rec-
ommended for grasping genuine reality and for understanding human
affairs.^

Nevertheless, the actual character of scientific method offers
warrant neither for such attempts to limit its authority, nor for the
radical dualism of the qualitative and the quantitative, the mental
and the physical, upon which those attempts thrive. A brief mention
of some obvious features of experimental procedure will be sufiicient
to show how inadequate are the analyses on whose basis the authority
of scientific method is impugned.

In the first place, however “abstract’’ scientific theories may be,
those theories can be neither understood nor used except in con-
texts of familiar qualitative discriminations, afhese contexts are
tacitly taken for granted in the explicit formulation of theories, and
are neither ignored nor contemned by the practicing scientists. Con-
sider, for example, some of the operations involved in even so ele-
mentary a process as the measurement of spatial magnitude: standards
of magnitude must be constructed, requiring the use of familiar

I. Two citations from recent writers will help convey the flavor of the
alternauve methods which have been proposed.

“Imagination is more adequate to reality than reason, for reality is not
rational; therefore poetry and religion are better adapted to the real than
the sciences. The real is not abstract and general. It is always concrete and
individual; that is the reason why imagination alone can grasp it, whereas
the intellect cannot fully conceive it. A theory of imagination ... is urgently
needed as a foundation for ethics, esthetics, philosophy of history and of
religion, and even for metaphysics.” (Richard Kroner, m a paper read before
the Third Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, as quoted by
The Nett} York Times, August 29, 1942.)

. It IS an axiom of sound method that any experience is, in some manner
and to some degree, intrinsically cognitive. An experience of love ... is at
the same time an insight mto the loveable nature of what is loved; an experi-
ence of moral urgency ... is an insight into the rightness of the action to be
performed; an experience of reverence ... is an msight into the divinity of
what is reverenced. Every such experience is a growth in wisdom and the
wisdom is not testable by scientific techniques. . . (Philip Wheelwright,
“Religion and Social Grammar,” The Kenyon Review, vol. 4 (1942), pp.
203-204.)

Malicious Philosophies of Science [ 21 ]

bodies of daily experience; the relative CMistancy of the standards
must be established, thus necessitating the noting of qualitative
changes such as temperature; and the mutual relations of bodies
must be discriminated, thus involving the identification and distinc-
tion of bodies on the basis of such qualities as color and the texture
of surfaces. In general, no metaphysical opposition between the
qualitative and the quantitative is forced upon us in this process,
since the institution of quantitative standards is simply the ordering
and the discrimination of qualitative continua. The view that the
subject-matter and the data of the physicist are opaque pointer-
readings is clearly a falsification of the scientist’s procedure— a fal-
sification which becomes more evident the more thorough is our
examination of the full spectrum of scientific operations.

In the second place, there can be no doubt that the colors, sounds,
and other characteristics we perceive in our every-day affairs owe
their existence not only to the objects they are commonly believed
to qualify, but also to complicated mechanisms (including physio-
logical ones) of which common-sense is frequently unaware. But
it does not follow that these qualities are therefore constituted out
of some “mental stuff,” or that a “mind” (in the sense of a disem-
bodied, experimentally unidentifiable agent) is required for bring-
ing them into existence. Whatever the conditions may be for the
occurrence of colors, for example, experience shows extended sur-
faces to be colored; and if it is held that colors are “mental,” traits
(such as that of being extended) must be attributed to the mind
which are the presumptive distinguishing marks of physical objects.
In that case, however, what becomes of the notion of mind as a
disembodied entity^ But dialectic aside, there is no shred of evidence
that in addition to complicated physico-organic processes any other
“agents” are required to produce the qualitative manifolds of expe-
rience. The postulation of an additional agent (held to be something
distinctively “mental”) is on par with the caprice of endowing the
planets with souls in order to account for their motions. The actual
procedures of the natural sciences thus offer no ground for the
alleged dualism between the mental and the physical; and accord-
ingly, even the semblance of a reason disappears for limiting the
scope of experimental techniques.

And in the third place, the “abstractness” with which natural
science is charged as a fatal weakness, is in fact a trait of all cogni-

[ 22 ] Sovereign Reason

tion. All cognition involves the making of distinctions and the rec-
ognition of some things as relevant and others as not; in this sense,
therefore, all cognition abstracts from its subject-matter and pre-
scinds those features from it which bear on the problems at issue.
To know the course of the planets is not to engage in periodic jour-
neys around the sun; to know the factors and conditions of a human
transaction is not the same as to participate in its joys and sorrows.
More generally, it is not the function of knowledge to reproduce its
own subject-matter; and to refuse to make abstractions of any sort
is to abandon knowledge in favor of uninformed feeling and blind
experience. Accordingly, just what is the quarrel of those critics
who find fault with the abstractness of science? Do they seriously
claim that the theories of science are not relevant to their subject-
matters? Do they maintain that there are ways essentially dufferent
from and superior to those employed in the natural science for
ascertaining the conditions for the occurrence of things and events^
Or do they disdain science simply because it does not supply what
no knowledge worthy of the name can ojffer— a* unanalyzed redupli-
cation of its own subject-matter? In either event, their discontent
flows from a willful romanticism and a disregard of the historical
achievements of the natural sciences; it provides no valid ground
for excluding the operations of experimental inquiry from the do-
main of human affairs.

2 .

A second widespread critique of scientific methods is at bottom
a variant of the one already considered. It does not explicitly dis-
own the authority of science in human affairs; but it does recom-
mend the adoption of such vague and irresponsible canons of
experimental control that it in effect argues for the exclusion of
the logical methods employed in the positive sciences from the
study of social problems. This view rests its case on two major
claims; that in the past the natural sciences have mistakenly tried
to ‘‘reduce^’ all features of the world to “mechanicar’ or ^^material-
istic” properties; and that recent advances in our knowledge have
demonstrated the breakdown of the “mechanical” categories of
classical science. The present view, like the previous one, maintains
that the human scene is so discontinuous with the “lower levels” of
nature that a common logic of inquiry cannot be adequate to all

Malicious Philosophies of Science [ 23 ]

of them; it therefore concludes that problems affecting human
destiny must be investigated on the basis of canons of validity and
mtelligibihty which differ radically from those used in the natural
sciences.

Let us examine these contentions. And first, what are we to under-
stand by the terms “mechanical” and “materialistic”. > When prac-
ticing physicists characterize an explanation as “mechanical,” they
mean a theory which, like the one developed by Galileo and New-
ton, explains a class of changes entirely on the basis of the masses
and the spatial and temporal relations of bodies. In this quite precise
sense of the word, Maxwell’s electro-magnetic theory is not a
mechanical theory, and with its advent in the 19th century the
earlier hope that the science of mechanics would become the uni-
versal science of nature was gradually abandoned. But those who
accuse classical science of being “mechanical” are anything but so
definite as to the real point of their charge. For according to them
the Darwinian theory of organic evolution as well as Maxwell’s
theory of electro-m^netisni are mechanical, although neither of
these theories satisfies the physicist’s definition of “mechanical.”
The only clear meaning which can be given to the accusation is
that classical science is detenmnistic—m the sense that it attempts
to discover the precise conditions for the occurrence of phenomena,
without benefit of final causes and without invoking experimentally
unidentifiable causal agents.

But if this is the meaning of the charge, the claim that modem
science no longer operates with mechanical categories is singularly
ill-founded. As already noted, even classical physics recognized that
mechanical theories (in the technical sense of the word) are not
universally adequate; and recent researches into atomic phenomena
have only fortified this conclusion. There is, however, nothing in
modern research which requires the abandonment of the generic
ideal of classical science: to find the determining conditions for the
occurrence of phenomena, expressible in terms capable of overt
empirical control Thus, even modern quantum-theory— although
it employs technical modes of specifying the character of physical
systems which are different from those used in classical mechanics^
—is deterministic or mechanical (in the loose sense) in so far as it
rigorously specifies the unique physical conditions under which
certain types of changes will occur. Similarly, modern genetics is

[ 24 ] Sovereign Reason

no less deterministic than the Darwinian theory, since the former
even more completely than the latter has succeeded in disclosing
the mechanisms or structures involved in the transmission of char-
acteristics from one generation to another. It is therefore simply
not true that recent advances in knowledge have demonstrated the
untenability of the logical canons of classical science.

The claim that the world-picture according to natural science
“reduces” everything to bhnd, undifferentiated collocations of ma-
terial particles, and thus fails to do justice to the distinctive traits
of human behavior, likewise rests on a misconception as to what
the sciences in fact accomplish. Consider, for example, the follow-
ing comments of the late Lord Balfour:

What are we to say about a universe reduced without remainder to
collections of electric charges radiating throughout a hypothetical ether^
... We can certainly act on our environment, and as certainly our
actions can never be adequately explained in terms of entities which
neither think, nor feel, nor purpose, nor know. It constitutes a spiritual
invasion of the physical world,— it is a miracle. ... We are spiritual
beings, and must take account of spirimal values.^'The story of a man
is something more than a mere continuation of the story of matter.
It is different in kmd. . .

That this represents a caricature of what the achievements of
physics imply, will be evident if we recall that the sciences seek to
determine the precise conditions under which events come into
being and continue to exist. For in ascertaining those conditions the
sciences do not thereby deny the existence of any traits found in
nature, whether in the human scene or elsewhere. In particular,
physics has assumed the task of finding the most general and per-
vasive constituents and circumstances of existing things; it does
not legislate away as unreal or non-existent— and could not do so
without contradiction— the things and events into whose conditions
of existence it inquires. The explanations which physics offers for
the traits and changes it studies, consist of careful specifications of
the conditions under which those traits and changes occur; and no
other sense of “explanation” is relevant in discussing its findings.
Whether these explanations can be stated entirely in terms of a
special class of entities and their relations (for example, in terms
of the distribution of electrically charged particles), is a specific

2. Arthur J. Balfour, in an essay contributed to Science, Religion and
Reality (edited by Joseph Needham), pp. 15-17.

Malicious Philosophies of Science [ 25 ]

empirical issue which can be resolved only by detailed empirical
inquiry; it cannot be settled by dialectic, or by an apriori fiat such
as that the living cannot be explained in terms of non-living.

Criticisms of natural science such as the following are therefore
altogether pointless, since they operate with mythological concep-
tions as to the character of its explanations:

With the faintest and simplest element of consciousness, natural science
meets something for which it has no pigeon-hole anywhere in its system.

. . . Mind at its best is autonomous. Granting that it is connected mys-
teriously and intimately with physical processes that natural science
claims as its own, it cannot be reduced to those processes, nor can it be
explained by the laws of those processes.^

Explanations of “mind” in terms of physical processes do not wipe
out the distinction between the behavior of inorganic masses and
the distinctive activities of men; nor do they pretend to deduce
somehow the direction of those activities from physical laws con-
taining no mention of purposive behavior. Such explanations simply
state the generalized* conditions for the occurrence of “mind.”
Accordingly, the only form of “reduction” with which the natural
sciences may rightly be charged, is the form which consists in
ascertaining the structures under which specific traits are mani-
fested; and it is clear that if those sciences failed in effecting such
a reduction, they would fail in achieving the objective of knowl-
edge. The conclusion seems unavoidable that those who would
exclude the logical methods of the natural sciences from fields of
social inquiry, on the score that these methods commit their users
to the “reductive fallacy,” are in effect recommending the abandon-
ment of the quest for the causal determinants of human affairs.

One final claim, associated with the charge that the logic of natu-
ral science is “reductive,” remains to be considered— the claim that
human traits are “emergent properties” on a “higher level” of
existence than are those with which physics and chemistry are con-
cerned, so that the methods employed by these disciplines cannot
be adequate to the study of the higher emergent qualities. Some
examples will make clear the chief features of the theory of emer-
gence. However much we may know about the interaction of
hydrogen and oxygen with other elements, so it is said, it is

3. Brand Blanshard, “Fact, Value, and Science,” in Science and Man (edited
by Ruth Nanda Anshen), pp. 189, 203.

[ 26 ] Sovereign Reason

impossible to infer from such knowledge the fact that they com-
bine to form water, and in particular, the qualities which emerge
when water is formed could never be predicted from those data.
Similarly, no amount of knowledge concerning the physics and
physiology of the human body makes it possible to deduce the
“spiritual” characteristics of the organism as a thinking, purposive
creature. Nature is thus conceived as a system of levels of emer-
gence, each level requiring a peculiar mode of study; and a fortiori,
the distinctive qualities of human beings can be satisfactorily ex-
plored and understood only when inquiry into them is conducted
on the basis of a logic specific to “spiritual” subject-matter.

But the following brief remarks will be sufficient to blunt what-
ever force the argument from the alleged facts of emergence may
be supposed to have. It is indeed not possible to deduce the prop-
erties of water (for example, its transparency or its ability to
quench thirst) from those of hydrogen and oxygen, if the former
properties do not enter into the premises from which the deduc-
tion is attempted. For in general, no statement containing a given
term “P” can be deduced from a class of statements unless the latter
also contain that term. In one sense, therefore, the main contention
of emergent evolution is simply a logical truism. In the second place,
although the occurrence of certain traits may be left unexplained
by one theory, a different theory (perhaps a revised form of the
first one) may supply a satisfactory explanation. For example, the
theories of physics which were accepted at the beginning of the
19th century were unable to account for any chemical facts, al-
though present-day physics is in the position to explain the occur-
rence of many chemical reactions. Accordingly, whether a quality
is to be regarded as an “emergent” or not is relative to a specific
theory, and is not an inherent fact about that quality. It also follows
that since no theory of science can be regarded as necessarily final,
traits which at one time are taken to fall into the province of one
specialized discipline, may at some later date be explained on the
basis of theories developed in a different branch of science. This
has certainly been the history of such sciences as chemistry, biology,
and even psychology, in their relation to physics. And finally, if
the doctrine of emergence is seen in this light, no clear reasons
remain why the logic of experimental inquiry— as conducted in the
natural sciences— has no authority over investigations into human

Malicious Philosophies of Science [ 27 ]

affairs. Indeed, as the natural sciences have become more compre-
hensive they have provided an enriched understanding of human
traits. No theoretical limits can be set to such a progressively
widening scope of the sciences of nature. And what is no less to
the point, these fresh achievements have involved no surrender, on
the part of the natural sciences, of the procedural principles under
whose guidance they obtained their historical successes.

3 "

The views which have been noticed thus far attempt to limit the
scope of scientific methods on the basis of considerations that are
at least nominally scientific in character. The criticisms of science
to which attention must next be directed do not even pretend to
adduce scientific grounds for their claims, and are frankly based
upon explicit theological and metaphysical commitments for which
no experimental evidence is invoked. The chief burden of their
complaints is that science offers no ‘'ultimate explanation” for the
facts of existence; and* their chief recommendation is the cultivation
of “ontological wisdom” as the sole method for making “ultimately
intelligible” both the order of the cosmos and the nature of the
good life.

Some citations from recent writers will exhibit more clearly than
would a paraphrase the unique mixture of pontifical dogmatism,
oracular wisdom, and condescending obscurantism which seems to
be the indispensible intellectual apparatus of this school of criticism.
Professor Gilson characterizes the plight of science as follows:

This world of ours is a world of change; physics, chemistry, biology,
can teach us the laws according to which change actually happens to
it; what these sciences cannot teach us is why this world, taken together
with its laws, its order, and its intelligibility is, or exists. . . . Scientists
never ask themselves •why things happen, but honw they happen. Now
as soon as you substitute the positivist’s notion of relation for the meta-
physical notion of cause, you at once lose all right to wonder nwhy things
are, and why they are what they are. . . . Why anything at ail is, or
exists, science knows not, precisely because it cannot even ask the ques-
tion. To this supreme question the only answer is that each and every
particular existential energy, and each and every particular existing
thing depends for its existence upon a pure Act of existence. In order
to be the ultimate answer to all existential problems, this supreme cause
has to be absolute existence. Being absolute, such a cause is self-sufficient;
if it creates, its creative act must be free. Since it creates not only being

[ 28 ] Sovereign Reason

but order, it must be something which at least eminently contains the
only principle of order known to us in experience, namely, thought.**

And Professor Maritain, building on the alleged subordination of
science to metaphysics, indicates some of the immediate conse-
quences of this hierarchial arrangement:

Science ... is distinguished from wisdom in this, that science aims at
the detail of some special field of knowing and deals with the secondary,
proximate or apparent causes, while wisdom aims at some universal
knowing and deals with prime and deepest causes, with the highest
sources of being. . . . Wisdom is not only distinct from but also superior
to science, in the sense that its object is more universal and more deeply
immersed in the mystery of things, and in the sense that the function of
defendmg the first principles of knowledge and of discovering the funda-
mental structure and organization thereof belongs to wisdom, not to
science. . . . Science puts means in man’s hands, and teaches men how to
apply these means for the happiest outcome, not for him who acts, but
for the work to be done. Wisdom deals with ends in man’s heart, and
teaches man how to use means and apply science for the real goodness
and happiness of him who acts, of the person himself. . . . Science is like
art in this that though both are good in themselves man can put them to
bad uses and bad purposes: while in so far as man uses wisdom ... he
can only use it for good purposes.

The paleontologist does not step out of his sphere when he establishes
the hypothesis of evolution and applies it to the origin of the human
being. But the philosopher must warn him that he is out of his field
when he tries to deny for that reason that the human soul is a spiritual
soul which cannot emanate from matter, so that if once upon a time the

4. Etienne Gilson, God and Philosophy, pp. 72, 140. Although Whitehead’s
manner of arriving at his speculative cosmology is radically different from
that cultivated by neo-Thomists, his evaluations of the hnutanons of natural
science are frequently not dissimilar. He comments as follows on “the grand
doctrine of Nature as a self-sufficient, meamngless complex of facts”* “Newton
left for empirical investigation the determination of the particular stresses
now existing. In this determination he made a magnificent beginning by iso-
lating the stresses indicated by his law of gravitation. But he left no hint,
nvhy in the nature of things there should be any stresses at alL The arbitrary
motion of the bodies were thus explained by the arbitrary stresses between
material bodies, conjoined with their spatiality, their mass, and their initial
states of motion. By introducing stresses— m particular the law of gravitation—
instead of the welter of detailed transformations of motion, he greatly in-
creased the systematic aspect of nature. But he left ah the factors of the
system— more particularly, mass and stress— in the position of detached facts
devoid of reason for their compresence. He thus illuminated a great philo-
sophic truth, that a dead nature can ^ve no reasons. All the ultimate reasons
are in terms of aim at value. A dead nature aims at nothing.” A. N, White-
head, Modes of Thought, pp. 183-4, italics not in the text.

Malicious Philosophies of Science [ 29 ]

human orgamsm was produced by a mutation of an animal organism, it
was because of the infusion of a soul created by God.®

Although criticism of a position is futile when those who hold
it make a virtue of its mysteries and when they regard themselves
as superior to the usual canons of scientific intelligibility, those
who are not so fortunately placed may find the following observa-
tions not irrelevant. In the first place, there is a perfectly clear sense
in which science does supply answers as to “why” things happen
and are what they are. Thus, if we ask why the moon becomes
eclipsed at certain times, the answer is that at those times the moon
moves into the earth’s shadow; if we ask why the moon behaves
in this way, the answer is given in part by the theory of gravita-
tion; if we ask why bodies behave in the manner predicated by
this theory, the answer is supplied by the general theory of rela-
tivity. On the other hand, if we repeat this question concerning
relativity theory, no further answer is at present forthcoming, so
that for the present at least this theory is an “ultimate” or “brute”
fact. Furthermore, if some day relativity theory should become ab-
sorbed into a unified field-theory embracing both macroscopic
and microscopic phenomena, the unified field-theory would explain
why the equations of relativity theory hold, but at the same time
it would become the (perhaps only temporary) “ultimate” struc-
tural fact. In science the answer to the question “why” is there-
fore always a theory, from which the specific fact at issue may be
deduced when suitable initial conditions are introduced. The point
of these familiar remarks is that no matter how far the question
“why” is pressed—and it may be pressed indefinitely— it must termi-
nate in a theory which is itself not logically demonstrable. For no
theory which explains why things happen as they do and not other-
wise can be a logically necessary truth. It follows that those who
seek to discern the laws of nature to be necessary, as well as those
who “hope to see that it is necessary that there should be an order
of nature,” are violating an elementary canon of discoursive thought.

In the second place, it is obvious that anyone who invokes an

5. The first paragraph is taken from the essay “Science and Wisdom ” con-
tained in Sctence and Man, pp. 66-7, 72, 94, The second paragraph is from
the essay “Science, Philosophy and Faith,” contained in the volume Science,
Philosophy and Religion, the proceedings of the First Conference on Science,
Philosophy and Religion, p. 181.

[ 30 ] Sovereign Reason

“absolute cause” (or God) to explain “why” the world exists,
merely postpones settling his accounts with the logic of his ques-
tion: for the Being who has been postulated as the Creator of the
world is simply one more being into the reasons of whose existence
it is possible to inquire. If those who invoke such a Being declare
that such questions about His existence are not legitimate, they
surmount a difficulty only by dogmatically cutting-short a discus-
sion when the intellectual current runs against them. If, on the
other hand, the question is answered with the assertion that God
is his own cause, the question is resolved only by falling back
upon another mystery; and at best, such a “reason” is simply an
unclear statement of the grounds upon which scientists regard as
unintelligible the initial “why” as to the world’s existence. But a
mystery is no answer if the question to which it is a reply has a
definite meaning; and in the end, nothing is gained m the way of
intellectual illumination when the discussion terminates in such
a manner.

In the third place, the postulation of an ‘^absolute cause” or an
“ultimate reason” for the world and its structure provides no an-
swer to any specific question which may be asked concerning any
particular objects or events in the world. On the contrary, no
matter what the world were like, no matter what the course of
events might be, the same Ultimate Cause is offered as an “explana-
tion.” This is admitted in so many words by Professor Gilson:

The existence or non-existence of God ... is a proposition whose
negation or affirmation determines no change whatever in the structure
of our scientific explanation of the world and is wholly independent of
the contents of science as such. Supposing, for instance, there be design
in the world, the existence of God cannot be posited as a scientific
explanation for the presence of design in the world; it is a metaphysical
one.®

But just what does an “explanation” explain when it explains noth-
ing in particular? What understanding of our world does a meta-
physics provide which is compatible both with a design in the
processes of nature as well as with its absence, with the existence
of specific goods as well as with their non-existence, with one
pervasive pattern of causal interactions as well as with another?

<S. Op. cit., p. 141.

Malicious Philosophies of Science [31]

A high price in unintelligibility must be paid when the canons of
scientific discourse and inquiry are abandoned.

And finally, the assumption that there is a superior and more
direct way of grasping the secrets of the umverse than the pain-
fully slow road of science has been so repeatedly shown to be a
romantic illusion, that only those who are unable to profit from
the history of the human intellect can seriously maintain it. Cer-
tainly, whatever enlightenment we possess about ourselves and the
world has been achieved only after the illusion of a “metaphysical
wisdom” superior to “mere science” had been abandoned. The
methods of science do not guarantee that its conclusions are final
and incorrigible by further inquiry, but it is by dropping the pre-
tense of a spurious finality and recognizing the fallibility of its
self-corrective procedures that science has won its victories. It may
be a comfort to some to learn that in so far as man uses “wisdom”
he can aim only at the good; since the most diverse kinds of action
—kindly as well as brutal, beneficent as well as costly in human life
—are undertaken in the name of wisdom, such a testimonial will
doubtless enable everyone engaged in such an undertaking to re-
double his zeal without counting the costs. But it is not wisdom
but a mark of immaturity to recommend that we simply examine
our hearts if we wish to discover the good life; for it is just because
men rely so completely and unrefiectively on their intuitive insights
and passionate impulses that needless sufferings and conflicts occur
among them. The point is clear: claims as to what is required by
wisdom need to be adjudicated if such claims are to be warranted;
and accordingly, objective methods must be instituted, on the basis
of which the conditions, the consequences, and the mutual com-
patibility of different course of action may be established. But if
such methods are introduced, we leave the miasmal swamps of
supra-scientific wisdom, and are brought back again to the firm
soil of scientific knowledge.

4 *

The final variety of current criticism of science to be considered
rests its case on the alleged facts of history* T^he development of
science, it is admitted, has brought with it an increase in material
power^ a broadening of the average span of human life, and a wider
distribution of innumerable goods than was possible in earlier days.

[ 32 ] Sovereign Reason

Nevertheless, so the criticism runs, human happiness has not in-
creased and the quality of life has not improved. On the contrary,
increased power over material nature has generated a deadening
monotony and uniformity in men’s lives, has produced ghastly bru-
talities, cataclysmic wars, and fierce superstitions, and has under-
mined personal and social security. Science deals with instrumentali-
ties and is incapable of determimng values; and with the spread of
secular naturalism and the consequent decline of religious influences,
men have grown insensitive to the distinction between good and
evil, and have identified material success with ethical excellence.
Intellectual historians join hands with preachers and pubhcists in
placing the blame for contemporary Fascism upon the demoralizing
effects of positivistic philosophy. And in language solemn and
threatening Professor Maritain warns his readers of the dreadful
consequences which allegedly flow from scientific naturalism:

Let us not delude ourselves; an education in which the sciences of
phenomena and the corresponding techniques take precedence over phil-
osophical and theological knowledge is alread^^, potentially, a Fascist
education; an education in which biology, hygiene and eugenics provide
the supreme criteria of morality is already, potentially, a Fascist edu-
cation.'^

Whatever may be the validity of the causal imputations contained
in such criticism, it cannot be denied, unfortunately, that many of
its characterizations of modem society are well founded; it is cer-
tainly not the intent of the following comments to dispute them.
It must nevertheless be noted that the implied judgment, according
to which the quality of modern life is inferior to that of earlier so-
cieties unburdened by an institutionalized natural science, is based
on a definite set of preferences or values in terms of which human
history is surveyed. But while it is clear that there is nothing rep-
rehensible in employing definite standards of valuation (for exam-

7. In the essay “Science, Philosophy and Faith,” op. cit., p. 182. Neo-
Thomists have no monopoly in the making of such casual imputations. Thus,
in his essay “Fact and Value m Social Science,” Professor Frank Kmght
writes as follows: “In the field of social policy, the pernicious notion of
insmimentalisrn, resting on the claim or assumption of a parallelism between
social and natural science is actually one of the most serious of the sources of
danger which threaten destruction to the values of what we have called
civilization. ... It is a serious reflection that the unsatisfactory state of affairs
in social science has largely resulted from the very progress of science. , .
Science and Man (edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen), pp. 325-6.

ialicious Philosophies of Science [33]

lie, such as are involved in Catholic Christianity), such standards
leed to be made explicit and should not be assumed as self-evident
nd above criticism. For it is sheer dogmatism to assume that only
me conception of spiritual excellence is valid; and it is the height of
liscourtesy and parochialism to damn a society as immoral simply
lecause its standards of excellence diflFer from one’s own. More-
over, comparative judgments as to the happiness of men are notori-
ously untrustworthy, unless they are based upon objective measures
>f well-being. And if the material conditions of life are discounted
is indications of “true” happiness, the critic’s evaluations of differ-
,nt cultures are a better guide to his own preferences and loyalties
.han to the ostensible subject-matter of his judgment.

Let us turn to the causal imputations contained in the criticism
under consideration. Almost no argument is required to show that
f the growth of science may validly be held responsible for the
Us of modem society, then the fact that men marry may no less
alidly be declared the cause of the evils of divorce. For surely,
divorce would be impossible unless men first married, just as our
'»resent social distresses would not exist unless the advance of sci-
ntific knowledge had first made possible our present institutional
tructures. But to convert marriage into the cause of divorce, and
he advance of secular knowledge into the cause of social ills, is
“0 convert the context in which problems arise mto an agent respon-
sible for our inability to master them. As well argue that in order
0 eliminate the evils of divorce men must stop getting married, as
“ecommend the de-secularization of modern society as a solution
or its difficulties; in either case the conversion of context into cause
^ an unintelligent performance. The development of science has
rought with it new opportunities for the exercise of human ener-
gies, and has helped set the stage for the emergence of new problems.
How many of these problems have remained unsolved because
ested interests and the cake of custom have prevented the appli-
;ation to them of the methods of controlled inquiry which the
natural sciences use so successfully, it is difficult to judge. But in
any event, the indictment of scientific intelligence as solely respon-
ible for our present difficulties not only involves an arbitrary
election of one factor from a complex of others distinguishable in
ae social scene; it arbitrarily rejects the one instrument from which
.1 resolution of these difficulties may reasonably be expected.

[ ] Sovereign Reason

Consider, finally, the charge that science “cannot determine
values,” and that therefore the apprehension of the elements of a
good life must be obtained through some form of emotional experi-
ence. Now whatever be one’s views as to the nature of values—
whether they are regarded as relative or absolute, dependent on
human preferences or not— it must be admitted that a science (such
as astronomy) which does not concern itself with values and which
does not contain value-terms in its vocabulary, is incompetent to
establish value judgments. The thesis that some sciences cannot
determine values is thus trivially true. On the other hand, every
rational appraisal of values must take cognizance of the findings of
the natural and social sciences; for if the existential conditions and
consequences of the realization of values are not noted, acceptance
of a scheme of values is a species of undisciplined romanticism.
Accordingly, unless values are to be affirmed on the basis of un-
controlled intuition and impulse, all the elements of scientific anal-
ysis-observation, imaginative reconstruction, dialectic elaboration
of hypotheses, and experimental verification— must be employed.
Knowledge of biology and hygiene are indeed not sufficient for an
adequate conception of the moral life; but if one may Judge from
the historical functions of some philosophic and theologic ideas
in perpetuating economic inequality and human slavery, and in
sanctioning the brutal shedding of human blood, neither is a knowl-
edge of philosophy and theology.

It is often urged that what is good for man lies outside the prov-
ince of scientific method, because the determination of human
goods requires a sympathetic understanding of the human heart
and a sensitive, individualized perception of the qualities of human
personality; and the exercise of such powers, it is maintained, has
no place in the procedures of science. But this objection rests, at
bottom, on a failure to distinguish between the psychological and
sociological conditions under which ideas originate, and the validity
of those ideas. Thus, it is reported of Schiller that he used to place
a rotting apple on his desk for the stimulus the odor of the fruit
provided to his writing; but while this is an interesting item about
the conditions under which Schiller obtained his inspirations, it
has no bearing on the issue as to quality of his poetry. Similarly,
the unusual circumstances— whether personal or social— under which
many seers and religious prophets obtained their visions are not

Malicious Philosophies of Science [ 35 ]

relevant in a consideration of the soundness of their moral exhorta-
tions. More generally, the psychology and the sociology of research
are not identical with its logic. Those who disparage the application
of scientific methods to the evaluation of human goods, on the
ground that those methods exclude the exercise of a sympathetic
imagination, are not only mistaken in their factual allegations; they
are also well on the road to identifying the sheer vividness and the
emotional overtones of ideas with their vaKdity.

2

Recent Philosophies
of Science

-Although the name “philosophy of science” is a recent one, the
types of inquiry which it covers are not. Speculation on the mean-
ing and conditions of our knowledge of the world is as old as sys-
tematic inquiry, and accordingly the first writings on the philosophy
of science are those of the ancient Greeks. Indeed, the works of
Plato and Aristotle are the beginning of that long series of com-
mentaries upon the content, the nature, and the limitations of science
which are the characteristic products of the history of philosophy
itself. It would be an anomaly if an institution with consequences as
important for human weal and woe as western science has had,
should not constantly receive interpretations of its significance. And
it is surely no accident that some of the most vital periods of philo-
sophic activity coincide with periods of “revolutionary” scientific
changes.

It is in large measure because we are living in a period of such
changes in science— particularly in physics, logic, and mathematics

[36]

Recent Philosophies of Science [ 37 ]

—that the philosophy of science has been receiving the attention of
philosophically minded scientists as well as of professional philoso-
phers. The process of adjusting and reorganizing older conceptions
in the light of newer ones is a perpetual feature of reflective inquiry,
and the task has traditionally been assumed by philosophy.

However, it is not alone the sheer novelty of recent findings which
has brought the philosophy of science into prommence. One of
the arresting features in the history of science is that, although, in
terms of the control it provides and the contributions it makes to
daily living, science has come ever closer to men’s bosoms, the theo-
retical foundations of the special sciences have become progressively
less familiar and their accounts of the ways of the world have become
more puzzhng. The assurance frequently given to the perplexed
beneficiary of science that its theoretical foundations are simply
“organized common-sense” carries little conviction or enlighten-
ment, if that organized common-sense outrages every familiar belief
he holds. Confusion, not clarity, emerges from tales of expanding
spaces, waves of probability, particles with velocity but no position,
or the determination of present activities by configurations existing
at some future time. In spite of its practical successes modem science
thus seems to cast a veil over the moving forces of nature; and the
familiar world of sights, sounds and smells, of substantial objects,
solid bodies, and stable conditions of behavior, appears to be cut
off from the world reported by science.

The status of the abstractly formulated objects and relations of
science, and their mode of connection with the gross and familiar
objects and relations of daily experience, are therefore the deepest
concern of contemporary philosophies of science. No writer fall-
ing under the loose rubric “philosopher of science” completely
neglects the task— designated by Whitehead as the distinctly philo-
sophic one— of being a “critic of abstractions,” and of attempting to
assess the relations of the unobservable and abstract entities of sci-
ence to the qualitative and concrete environment. Philosophers of
science differ profoundly in their modes of approach and in their
conclusions; they differ less strikingly in the general problem to
which they set themselves.

It is not feasible within a limited space to discuss the different
philosophies of science currently proposed Instead, a few influential
types will be distinguished and the characteristic views of their

[ 38 ] Sovereign Reason

representatives will be outlined. Moreover, while there are analyses
of science which base themselves on the actual or supposed findings
of biology or upon the allegedly distinctive character of the histor-
ical and social sciences, it is the philosophies of science whose point
of departure is the physical and mathematical sciences which, in
recent years and for obvious reasons, have received the major share
of attention. The present survey will in the main confine itself to
these, and four fairly distinct approaches to the interpretation of
science will be considered. They are as follows.

(1) The approach seeking to identify categorial traits in imme-
diate experience which are believed to be pervasive traits of every-
thing real and which may therefore be discovered in the objects
disclosed by the sciences. In terms of these pervasive traits continui-
ties are claimed to be established between the remote and the near,
between entities not accessible to direct observation and those which
are, between the abstractions of science and the concrete objects
of familiar experience. The outstanding writer who approaches the
materials of the theoretical sciences in thig vein is unquestionably
Whitehead.

(2) The approach which emphasizes the rich content of expe-
rience in domains other than theoretical physics as against the
‘‘abstract ballet” of theoretical formulations, and which accepts as
final the apparent incompatibility of the findings of everyday expe-
rience with those of mathematical physics. It nevertheless erects a
bridge between these “two worlds”; it offers a theory as to the
way in which mathematical physics is constructed, and concludes
that its man-made but opaque constructions hide a reality similar
to that which we find in ourselves. The best-known protagonist of
this view is Eddington.

(3) The approach which accepts theoretical science simply as
an instrument of control, and for which all problems concerning the
meaning of theoretical science are resolved either in terms of its
social usefulness or in terms of the principles of dialectic materialsm.
This approach is frequently, though not necessarily, coupled with a
historical thesis concerning the major forces making for progress in
science.

(4) Finally, the approach which seeks to fix the meaning of
scientific statements by examining the explicit rules or habits gov-
erning their usage. It insists that scientific conclusions cannot be

Recent Philosophies of Science [ 39 ]

imderstood unless the procedures involved in testing and applying
them are taken into account, and it maintains that clarity of under-
standing can be won only by noting the specific functions within
inquiry of theories and concepts. This approach fosters the critical
study of scientific language and behavior. It is an approach which
frequently goes under the somewhat unprecise and misleading name
of “operationalism.”

I.

Relativity and quantum theory have been the occasion for a
thoroughgoing criticism of the ontology alleged to be at the basis
of classical physics. This ontology, called ‘'scientific materialism,’'
derives its strength from the techniques and concepts employed in
the mechanics developed by Newton and his successors. In that
system, according to A^itehead’s interpretation, space and time are
simply vast receptacles filled with senseless, purposeless matter. Bits
of matter are assumed to have sharply confined properties, and the
full natures of material# objects can therefore be specified by their
spatio-temporal positions, independently of any essential relations
to other regions and other times. In consequence, matter “just does
what it does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external rela-
tions which do not spring from the nature of its being.”

The classical device of isolating certain features of bodies for the
purpose of theoretical analysis is legitimate; but it becomes an
instance of the fallacy of “misplaced concreteness,” and more par-
ticularly of the fallacy of “simple location,” when those features
are assumed to be exhaustive of the concrete nature of things. It is
a fallacy, according to Whitehead, because no concretely existing
things possess observable features with simple location or without
essential relations to the remote occurrences in the full universe. It
is because of the commission of this fallacy, he believes, that the
Nature celebrated by poetry and religion was converted by mech-
anistic science into a scene of purposeless activity, where stars and
molecules and human beings “blindly run,” and where colors and
sounds and smells are no longer traits of things but are properties of
percipient minds. Nature was bifurcated into a qualitative world
apprehended in perception and a world causing those qualities, and
no intelligible connection was supplied between these heterogeneous
realities. But in truth there are no actual points with dimensions, no

[ ] Sovereign Reason

lines withotit breadth, no particles of matter with sharply confined
regions of influence or non-relational properties. Whitehead’s first
task is to explain how such neat abstractions are derived from the
immediately apprehended features of the concrete world. His second
task is to formulate a system of categories and principles, adequate
to the world of direct experience as well as to the remote regions of
the world explored by theoretical physics.

The first task is discharged by him through the device baptized
as the “principle of extensive abstraction,” which has been hailed
as the “prolegomena to every future philosophy of nature.” Its
main idea can be briefly illustrated. We have no direct experience
of dimensionless mathematical points, and no reason to believe that
any bit of reality is such a point. However, we do have direct expe-
rience of one box or volume extending over another. Imagine a series
of Russian eggs in which each egg encloses another; we must, how-
ever, suppose that there are an infinite number of eggs in the set, in
order that there should be no smallest egg which would enclose no
other egg. As we follow the series of converging volumes we ap-
proach something that seems like a point. There is, however, no
limiting volume in the set. Instead of postulating a dimensionless
point as the limit, for whose existence there is no evidence whatso-
ever, Whitehead proposes to take the infinite series of convergent
volumes as itself constituting a point. It turns out that points so
defined have all the requisite mathematical properties, while at the
same time they are exhibited as entities standing in complex rela-
tions to all bodies and not as simple substances isolated from every-
thing else. In analogous ways, by specifying appropriate “abstractive
routes,” Whitehead defines other configurations and abstract no-
tions studied in physics. In this way, it is claimed, we may bridge the
gaps between the concrete facts of sense and the refined concepts
of science.

The primary object of Whitehead’s cosmological scheme is to
prevent the bifurcation of nature into an accessible and a trans-
cendental reality, by opposing to the philosophy of scientific ma-
terialism a philosophy of organism. His central assumption is that
the “immediate occasions” accessible to direct inspection (e.g., the
self-knowledge we have of our body’s activity), must display the
categories and the structures of activity fundamental to all of nature.
The most concrete things are identified as events, and their inherent

Recent Philosophies of Science [ 41 ]

character is to exhibit transition or passage into other events. But
this passage is not a linear succession of discrete and independent
events, since however narrowly an event may be specified further
determinations are presupposed: every event extends over other
events and is in turn included in still others. Every emergent event
intrinsically involves some aspect of all things, since it mirrors within
its own limited being the larger field in which it finds itself. An
event, hke a Leibnizian monad, is full with the past and big with
the future. Thus, the event consisting of the apprehension of a
landscape does not involve a castle, a field, a cloud, simply in them-
selves; that event is constituted by the perception of castle, field,
and cloud ‘‘over there” from the standpoint of the perceptual uni-
fication “over here.”

Nature is thus a structure of perspectival unifications and evolving
processes. The stable objects of science and familiar experience are
recurrent patterns of aspects within these unifications or events.
These “enduring objects,” whether they be electrons, atoms, moun-
tains, or animals, are taken by Whitehead to be “organisms” of vari-
ous degrees of complexity. They have “life-histories,” they are
partially formed by the “inheritance” of aspects from their own
past, they have “memories” of earlier segments of their life-histories,
they are capable of “envisaging” possibilities as yet unrealized, and
they form “societies” with powers of “creative adaptation” to their
environment. The human organism is itself a society, and the para-
digm of its structure is found everywhere in nature. Every feature
in this cosmology thus corresponds to some factor in what is
alleged to be our immediate experience. Its theology as well as
further details and refinements must, however, be passed over.

Whitehead’s philosophy of science is so full of acute insights and
is supported by so much expert knowledge of the details of theoreti-
cal science, that only the blind and the foolhardy may seem capable
of rejecting it. But however that may be, two fundamental objec-
tions to it must be briefly stated.

(a) The principle of extensive abstraction succeeds in doing none
of the things that may reasonably be expected from an instrument
devised for the criticism of abstraction. It is a mathematical calculus
whose application to the matters at hand raises the very problems
it was intended to solve. Thus, for mathematical purposes, a point
may be defined as an infibciite set of overlapping volumes. But no

[ 42 ] Sovereign Reason

empirical subject-matter involves infinite sets of volumes, and no
experiment could decide whether something alleged to be a point
is indeed a point if the relations between an infinite set of objects
would first have to be determined. Whitehead’s principle does not
therefore explain how any of the concepts of science, frequently
defined in terms of infinite series or limiting processes, are connected
with and applied to finite subject-matter.

(b) The attempt to understand the esoteric objects of science in
terms of the categories of direct experience suffers from at least one
fatal defect. These categories possess only such meaning as the con-
text of overt human behavior provides; accordingly, their extension
to new contexts having diflFerent operative qualities involves serious
ambiguities and distortions of words. Is it in any way illuminating
to characterize molecules as societies of atoms, possessing memories,
and with powers of choice and creative adaptation? The ^‘society”
of atoms is different from any type of human society, their capacity
for ‘‘memory,” “choice,” and “creative adaptation” is admittedly
unlike the similarly named powers of human<^)eings; ruling out these
differences converts atoms into human beings or, conversely, the
latter into the former. The use of like-sounding labels for distinct
things serves to create only the appearance of systematic knowledge
and clear understanding, and invites confusion by wrenching words
from their anchorage in determinate and recognizable meanings.

2 .

Perhaps the most widely read contemporary writer on the general
significance of science is Eddington. Who does not know his famous
account of the two tables, one of them the commonplace article of
furniture, the other the scientific object— the former extended, com-
paratively permanent, colored, solid and substantial, the latter
mostly emptiness and a collection of insubstantial electric charges
rushing about with great speed? Who has not heard his story of
the unfortunate elephant sliding down a grassy hillside which, in
the hands of the physicist, all become dissolved into bundles of
pointer-readings?

These bright images do not tell the whole story of Eddington’s
philosophy; and although the whole story cannot here be told, the
general outline of its plot can be explained. Four leit-motifs are
fundamental to it. In the first place, Eddington claims that physical

Recent Philosophies of Science [ 43 ]

tiieory studies the linkage of pointer-readings, and that these link-
ages hang together in an endless cycle, with no intrinsic reference
to the actual world. According to him, the definitions of physics
have a circular character, each being specified in terms of others,
but without revealing what substantial material they stand for. Thus
electric force is said to be defined as something which causes the
motion of an electric charge, while an electric charge is something
which exerts electric force; accordingly, ‘‘an electric charge is
something that exerts something that produces motion of something
that exerts something that produces . .

Somewhere, however, a reference to what is actual must be intro-
duced; for example, a certain set of pointer-readings must be identi-
fied with the color red. And according to Eddington, it is in
consciousness that contact with actuality is made. For all our
knowledge of the environing world comes to us in the form of
messages transmitted along the nerve-fibres to the seat of conscious-
ness, and it is only “our own ends of the fibres that we actually
know.” Everything else«is reconstructed by inference from the con-
tents of our consciousness. Accordingly, the material of the actuality
with which direct contact is made is of mental character. This is
the second leit-motif.

Science tells us nothing about the intrinsic natures of atoms or
elephants or anything else, since for it they are simply schedules
of pointer-readings. The world of science is thus a “shadow world,”
shadowing forth an “external world” whose nature is inscrutable
for physics. Since, however, the sole point at which contact is made
between theory and actuality reveals the latter to be of mental stuff,
why not accept this as an indication that the inscrutable substance is
also mental^ This is indeed Eddington’s conclusion. The stuff of
the world is mind-stuff, and the symbolic world of science has for
its substratum something akin to thought, something in which our
own mental consciousness lies, and something in which we may find
a Universal Mind.

The fourth theme concerns the logical status of such laws of
nature as the law of gravitation and the laws of converdon of
mass and energy. These laws seem to formulate objective struc-
'tures of the world. But on Eddington’s view, the permanence
and invariance which we seem to note in the flux of existence are
not objective traits of the latter; they are evidence for the mind’s

[ 44 ] Sovereign Reason

demand for permanence, for the fact that the processes of nature
have been fitted into frames of law which are of the mind’s own
choosing. Eddington thus follows Kant in all essentials if not
in details. He attempts to deduce the fundamental principles and
constants of physics from a priori assumptions concerning the
mind’s powers, and thereby claims to show that not only is the
stuff of existence spiritual but that its basic laws also spring from
the mind’s activity.

The mainstays of Eddington’s argument are well-worn articles
of furniture in the mansions of traditional philosophy. His sub-
jectivism, his religious pan-psychism, his apriorism, are familiar
to readers of Berkeley, Lotze and Kant. It is impossible to state
in short compass the serious difSculties which these positions have
to face, and present comment must be reserved for raising briefly
just one issue. How relevant as critiques of scientific abstrac-
tions are Eddington’s writings? The answer here suggested is
that they are of negligible relevance, because he fails in the main
to examine the concepts and techniques of physics in terms of
their recognized meanings and functions, and because his argu-
ment thrives on using terms in one context in a way which is intel-
ligible only in a very different one.

Two examples must suffice to make clear as well as to support
this charge. Every set of pointer-readings (e.g., the mass of an
elephant) represents distinctions in qualities and behaviors with
respect to which laboratory instruments have been previously cali-
brated; the numbers are theoretically significant only in so far
as they are obtained in definite ways from definite material. The
process of measurement is therefore not confined to reading off the
coincidences of pointers with marks on a scale. Consequently,
in no identifiable sense is the world of physics an opaque, shadowy
world. Again, Eddington contrasts the “common-sense table” with
a “scientific table,” and implies that because the former is “solid”
while the latter is “mostly emptiness” the common-sense and the
scientific views are incongruous. But the expressions “solid” and
“mostly emptiness” are defined or specified in just those contexts
in which it is appropriate to predicate the former of tables and not
the latter. If critical tests show that a given table is solid, the anal-
ysis of the table into a structure of electrons is valid only if that
structure exhibits the property in question; and for that structure

Recent Philosophies of Science [ 45 ]

of electrons the characterization “mostly emptiness” has no as-
signed meaning. It is therefore difficult to escape the conviction
that the foundations of Eddington’s philosophy of science consist
of outrageous puns.

3 -

The third type of philosophy of science will require only brief
exposition. It is professed, among others, by a number of scientists
in this country and England, whose object is to show the social
implications of theoretical research and thereby to rob modem
theories of their air of mystery. They explain, frequently with
admirable lucidity, the new sources of power opened up by science,
the economies in human effort which it is capable of effecting, and
the close interdependence of science and the technological arts.
The dominant emphasis is thus placed upon scientific theories as
engineers’ “blue-prints for action,” rather than as disclosures of
some final reality.

There might be little to object to this approach to science if
those who take it would not confuse their thesis by other claims:
that scientific research ought always to be conducted with the
social good in view, or that all significant research is in fact deter-
mined by the organization and practical needs of society. There
is, however, no evidence for the proposition that a warm social
conscience is the best guide for the conduct of research; there is
no ground for assuming that everyone knows what is socially
desirable, that what is not of immediate social value will never
prove to be so, or that devotion to socially valuable results neces-
sarily contributes to the fullest development of systematic knowl-
edge, There is overwhelming evidence to show that the content
and direction of theoretical research is in the main controlled by
technical problems internal to the sciences, and that changes in
the social economy do not in general constitute the sufficient con-
ditions for the specific content of theoretical inquiries.

A number of writers in this group make the further claim that
the methods as well as the conclusions of science conform to the
triad of “dialectical principles” sacred to many followers of Hegel
and Marx. For example, Levy has argued that the occurrence of
a distinct type of wave produced by a ship after it reaches a
critical velocity illustrates the law of abrupt change of quality

[ 46 ] Sovereign Reason

with sufficient increase of quantity; and Haldane has borne wit-
ness to the inestimable value of all three laws in his own biologi-
cal researches. Space is lacking to examine these and other claims
for the virtues of the dialectic laws. It must suffice to recall Ein-
stein’s remark that philosophers are fortunate indeed in being
always able to establish the agreement of the latest findings of
science with their own metaphysical principles. The principles
of dialectic can be guaranteed never the fail, because their terms
have no fixed content; they can be stretched to cover any facts
whatsoever, after the facts have been independently established.
Were it not for the mysterious profundity claimed for them, and
did they not serve to check inquiry by the glib finality with which
they resolve all problems, the laws of dialectic could be left un-
reproached as a curious verbal game. As instruments for disen-
tangling the web of theoretical constructions, however, they are
as barren as the purest of vestal virgins.

No single writer can be taken as an adequate representative of
the fourth approach to the philosophy of science, for this ap-
proach does not aim at a compact system but at painstaking anal-
yses of the details of scientific procedure. A few of the more
prominent names associated with it must, however, be mentioned;
Mach, Poincare, Duhem, Campbell, and Peirce, for their analyses
of the structure of physical theories and definitions; Russell, Witt-
genstein, Tarski, and Carnap, for their contributions to the logic
and methodology of the formal sciences; James, Dewey, Cohen,
Neurath, and Woodger, for their critiques of abstractions in
biology, psychology, and social theory. But this brief roster sug-
gests only faintly the wide range of specific analyses which have
been made.

The writers who fall into this group do not form a distinctive
“philosophical school”; there are among them realists, pragmatists,
positivists, Kantians, and solipsists. None the less, there are some
common principles of analysis implicit in their contributions—
even though, unfortunately, they do not always conform to them.
In the &st place, there is a distrust of wholesale philosophizing
which lives upon isolating conclusions from the procedures war-
ranting them, and which fails to note either the hypothetical char-

Recent Philosophies of Science [ 47 ]

acter of scientific constructions or the distinct logical functions
these have in deterrninate situations. Accordingly, effort is con-
centrated upon studying the overt and symbolic operations in-
tegral to scientific research, and upon analysis of particular theo-
ries and concepts. Stress is also placed on the facts that the con-
clusions of science are not necessarily final, that science develops
by a self-corrective method, and that it does not rest upon self-
evident truths.

Secondly, there is a striving after precision of statement, and
a keen awareness of the intellectual traps which language may
create for the unwary. With the rejection of the doctrine that
clarity is a matter of apprehending simple ideas or essences, the
attempt is made to discover the meaning of terms by study of the
overt uses to which they are subject. Much labor thus goes into
formulating and making explicit the rules of usage or the habits
which govern the meaning of terms. The speculative, construc-
tive character of scientific theories is recognized, and effort is
therefore made to discriminate those features in them which are
determined by stubborn fact from those which serve simply as a
scaffolding for the scientist’s activity.

And thirdly, scientific constructions are often critically evalu-
ated without legislating to the scientist the methods or the limits
of his specific enterprise. For it is often possible, in terms of canons
of evidence implicit in the traditions of science, to exhibit flaws
and unsupported claims in scientific constructions, or to point out
the distinctive logical features and advantages of alternative con-
ceptions. On the other hand, the history of the so-called ‘logic
of discovery” shows the futility of seeking prescriptions for ob-
taining success in research. Writers in this group are often con-
cerned with the logical evaluation of scientific formulations, but
not with canons for discovering them.

A few simple illustrations will perhaps convey the spirit of this
approach to the philosophy of science.

(a) It has been said, even by eminent physicists, that though
we may know much about what energy does^ we do not know
what it is. But to say that we know what energy does, means that
the equations of physics containing this term are supported by ade-
quate evidence and that the circumstances under which those equa-
tions may be applied are fairly well established. Since the mean-

[ 48 ] Sovereign Reason

ing of the term “energy” in a theoretical science is determined by
the system of equations into which it enters and by the rules gov-
erning their usage, the word hides no mystery; we do m fact
know what energy “really is” if these equations and rules are
known. The puzzles generated by recent theories according to
which certain particles of matter may have determinate velocities
but not simultaneously determinate positions, can be removed in
an analogous way. For in this context the phrase “particle of mat-
ter” is employed according to rules which differ from the rules
governing this phrase in other more familiar contexts. Accord-
ingly, we must not associate the usual images with the phrase,
so that the alleged incongruity of the physical world with the
world of experience turns out to be simply a difference in the
way like-sounding phrases are employed in different situations.
But this is a familiar phenomenon, and we have learned long ago
that the word “work” can have different applications in mechanics
from those it has in economics, without either of these disciplines
being therefore incoherent or unintelligible. ^

(b) Legal and political theory is a fertile field for the conver-
sion of modes of behavior into substantial agencies; and the reifica-
tion of terms like “property,” “contract,” “sovereignty,” “equality,”
and “freedom,” have often stood in the way of effective social
reform. Thus a problem frequently discussed is the nature of “cor-
porate personality.” Legally incorporated groups can conduct their
affairs with advantages lacking to men not so organized, but for
many purposes corporations have the legal status of “persons ”
They are, however, a curious kind of persons, for they cannot be
imprisoned or die natural deaths; and they may transact business
in one place though legally they have their locus in another. Ac-
cordingly, the nature of corporate personality has puzzled many
jurists, and they have argued that corporations have the status of
spiritual beings— disembodied and yet efficacious, self-subsistent but
with inherent rights of individual men. Such a hypostasis is un-
necessary, however, if the significance of the attribution of “per-
sonality” to corporations is examined operationally. For a corpora-
tion is precisely that kind of “person” which the law of the land
specifies: its nature is completely exhausted by the permitted ways
or possibilities of action compatible with the legal system in force.
There is thus no more mystery in the fact that a corporation has

its legal focus in one place while it acts in another, than in the
fact that a bell is located in one room and is heard in another— both
facts can be converted into insoluble puzzles, if the modes of
behavior are first excluded from the ‘‘natures” of things considered
and then conceived as additional substances. The concepts of the
social sciences thus lend themselves to precisely the same sort of
analysis as those of the physical sciences; they are intelligible in
terms of the rules and habits implicit in the applications which are
made of them.

It would be pleasant to report that those who profess to fol-
low this approach to the philosophy of science always conform
to its ideals. This is, regrettably, not possible. Careless analyses,
loose formulations, hasty generalizations, and commitments to prior
philosophical positions, frequently mar the work of even out-
standing proponents of this conception of philosophy; and in the
attempt to cleanse speculation of irrelevant and hampering accre-
tions, dirty children are occasionally emptied with dirty water.
The injunction to conduct analyses of concepts and theories with
a sober eye on their contexts and functions is easier to preach than
to follow, and it is apparently not difficult to believe that pro-
grams for such work are a sufficient earnest of achievement. Did
space permit, chapter and verse could be cited to support these
critical remarks. Nevertheless, the ideal which inspires this ap-
proach is not proved to be invalid or worthless because it is not
embodied, completely and always, in the works of those who fol-
low it; it is a difficult ideal, and one must be grateful for the fact
that it is realized so often and so well.

Enough has perhaps been said concerning these four approaches
to the philosophy of science to supply the reader with some basis
for a comparative evaluation. But whatever be his judgment, it is
clearly not necessary for him to reject any insights which writers
cultivating different approaches have contributed to the sober
understanding of the scientific enterprise. One should not forget
Whitehead’s warning that “a Nemesis waits upon those who de-
liberately avoid avenues of knowledge.” The present essay, how-
ever, is obviously written with the conviction that a fruitful and
illuminating type of philosophy of science will devote itself whole-
heartedly to the contextual and functional analysis represented by
the fourth of these approaches.

3

Philosophy

and the American Temper

A. NATION COMMITTED to a democratic way of life, but which
prescribes for its citizens a set of beliefs concerning the nature of
the cosmos and man’s place in it, is a contradiction in terms. When
permitted to reflect freely upon fundamental questions, men are
stimulated to thought by diverse experiences and divergent tradi-
tions; and under these circumstances the world comes to be viewed
from many different perspectives and portrayed in many different
colors. But the freedom to develop alternative conceptions of nature
^nd man, even though some of them may be grossly inadequate to
their subject matter, is an essential part of the liberal, democratic
tradition. There is accordingly no official American philosophy.

Nor is there, contrary to the tales repeated by many foreign
observers, any unique American philosophy, stemming from native
seed, nourished exclusively by native soil, and flowering in all but
lonely profusion in all parts of the land. Only unfamiliarity with
the variety of doctrines professed by academic teachers and reflec-

[50]

Philosophy and the American T emper [ 51 ]

tive men of letters in America, or inability to resist an impulse for
popular caricature, can produce such a claim. Ever since the settle-
ment of the American continent, the commerce of ideas between it
and Europe has been continuous, and the fundamental beliefs and
habits of mind of American intellectuals have always been swayed
by winds of doctrine coming from foreign shores. Even those modes
of thought which have often been identified as distinctively Amer-
ican (for example, Puritanism, New England Transcendentalism,
and Pragmatism) are historically related to intellectual movements
which have flourished across the Atlantic— to British Deism and
Empiricism, to the many varieties of German Philosophical Idealism,
and to French Positivism and Voluntarism. There is at least a grain
of truth in the witticism that philosophies which become moribund
in Europe obtain a second lease upon life when transplanted to
America. In any event, it is not possible to cite a type of philosophy
current in America which has not its identical counterpart, or at
least its unmistakable analogue, in other countries.

It would indeed be ^trange if it were otherwise. For although
the political and social experience of America has in many respects
been unique, contemporary America shares with western Europe a
comparable literary and religious heritage, a similar social and eco-
nomic structure, and above all an identical science. Geographical
distance does not by itself produce differences in fundamental atti-
tudes and beliefs. There is, to be sure, scarcely any evidence for the
widespread view that systems of philosophy, like other manifesta-
tions of the human spirit, are simply the “reflections” of the pre-
vailing economic structure of a society, and that there is therefore
a point-to-point correspondence between the history of ideas and
the socio-economic changes in the life of a people. But even in its
most abstract reaches philosophy is surely a commentary upon ex-
perience, so that men steeped in similar cultural traditions and con-
fronted with similar materials for reflections will in general adopt
comparable modes of viewing their place in the world.

Nevertheless, when proper qualifications are made, it is not untrue
to claim that a certain habit of mind and a set of general convic-
tions characterize the writings of many professional philosophers
in America which contrast sharply with the temper and the content
of much foreign thought. But one must hasten to add that these
convictions also contrast sharply with many intellectual currents

[ 52 ] Sovereign Reason

long and firmly established in the country, as well as with recent
importations that promise to acquire a wide following: with the
still influential survivals of the once dominant Calvinistic theologies;
with the rosy-hued philosophies of progress, which for a time re-
placed these latter in popular favor and which continue to exercise
a hold on many contemporary minds; with the current revivals of
the Augustinian emphasis on the inherent sinfulness of man, and
with the many calls to salvation through renunciation of wordly
effort; with absolute idealism in its many forms, still not without,
defenders among the older generation of philosophers as well as
among the younger ones; with a militant Thomism, which in recent
years has acquired vigorous camp-followers in lay seats of learning;
with phenomenology, stimulated to lush growth by the recent influx
of European scholars; and with Existenzphilosophie, suddenly fash-
ionable in literary circles because of French influence, though at
the moment without energetic advocates among professional philos-
ophers.

An adequate portrayal of the contemporary American scene
would have to give more than incidental mention to these contrasting
currents of thought. If they receive but scant notice in the present
account, it is because the movement in philosophy to be briefly
described appears to express more adequately than any of these the
dominant temper of American life. For it is a movement which is
profoundly influenced by the achievements of both theoretical and
applied science, and which malces its largest appeal to a people filled
with a stmrdy faith in the power of intelligent thought and action
to solve the problems besetting mankind. Without being narrowly
practical-minded or philistine in its loyalties, without undervaluing
the liberalizing functions of art, contemplative reflection and theo-
retical inquiry, it voices a frankly “this-worldly” philosophy. It
expresses the aspirations of a people still young enough to believe
that the good life can be achieved through an overt participation
in worldly affairs, rather than through a melancholy resignation.
It subscribes to the view that the things most dear to mankind are
brought into existence and are sustained in their functions by natural
forces; and it therefore finds only a romantic sentimentalism in the
conception according to which men are wanderers in an inherently
hostile world who must take their directions from supernatural
guides. It counts among its adherents a number of the older gener-

Philosophy and the American Temper [ 53 ]

ation of philosophers, but it also prides itself on the fact that it
has the vigorous support of many of the keenest and best disciplined
minds among the younger men. It is without question America’s
most significant contribution to philosophic intelligence.

This philosophy has been variously designated as object vie rela-
tivism, functional realism, contextualism, naturalism, and process
philosophy. Its central conceptions concerning man and nature have
sometimes been identified with the pragmatism or instrumentalism
of Peirce, James, Mead and Dewey. This identification is both
mistaken and misleading. Although contextualistic naturalism has
historical roots in pragmatism, and although Dewey himself is an
exponent of both, those professing the former do not in general feel
committed to the technical pragmatic doctrines concerning the
nature of truth or the function of knowledge, and in the main they
have no liking for the pragmatic or instrumentalist label. Indeed, the
specific pragmatic conceptions propounded by James and Dewey,
which caused such a flurry of excitement in the first quarter of the
present century, now appear to be of little more than historical in-
terest to the younger generation of American philosophers— in part,
no doubt, because the intellectual storm raised by those conceptions
has cleared the air of the traditional complacencies and barren self-
deceptions against which pragmatism was a protest. Unlike con-
textualistic naturalism, it is problematic whether, except in some
training schools for teachers and in centers of learning where the
personal influence of the founders of pragmatism is still alive, prag-
matism retains the expansive dynamism of a growing movement.
Nonetheless, pragmatism is the matrix out of which, at least in Amer-
ica, contextualistic naturalism has emerged. For certain features of
pragmatic philosophy that had been subordinated to its theory of
truth and knowledge, have subsequently received an independent
development; and fortified by fresh analyses of scientific method as
well as by the findings of biological inquiry, they have been forged
into a distinctive outlook upon man and nature.

Contextualistic naturalism is not a finished intellectual edifice,
and perhaps it will never develop into one. Though much periodical
literature indicates whence and whither it is tending, there certainly
is no one treatise that could be cited as the Surmrn of its doctrines.
However, many of the later writings of John Dewey, W. H.
Sheldon's Americans Progressive Philosophy^ and various essays in

[ 54 ] Sovereign Reason

the recent collection entitled Naturalism and the Human Spirit
(edited by Y. H. Krikorian) contain at least its basic ground plan.
Those out of sympathy with it are likely to judge it as eclectic,
loose-jointed, and at a number of essential points even distressingly
vague. But those who subscribe to its main tenets believe that a
working philosophy cannot be more tidy and architechtonically
complete than the subjects of which it treats.

For a cardinal thesis of contextualistic naturalism is the essentially
incomplete but fundamentally plural character of existence, in
which no overarching pattern of development can be discerned, and
in which qualitative discontinuities and loose conjunctions are as
ultimate features as are firm connections and regular cycles of
change. Events are recognized to have causes and consequences,
without beginning and without preordained end. But though events
are genuinely related to other events, they are not related to all
events in the same way, not everything is relevant to the occurrence
of everything else, and no events are related to others by logical
necessity. Indeed, things may be caught up in some eddy of the
flux of change which can alter their customary modes of behavior
and transform them in a manner not always deducible from the
known conditions of their normal existence. Novelty, contingency,
and alternative possibilities of development, are accordingly basic
features of nature. The disciplined human perspective upon the flux
of events does not betray its observers, and the mixture of direction
and chaos which that perspective reveals is not the superficial appear-
ance of a fixed plan working itself out with inexorable logic.

In consequence, contextualistic naturalists exhibit a profound
distrust of philosophic systems which attempt to catch once for all
the variegated contents of the world in a web of dialectical neces-
sity. They are keenly conscious of the limitations of purely formal
analysis even when they engage in it. For they recognize that a logic,
no matter how subtle, provides no warrant concerning matters of
fact unless it is supported by controlled observation. Indeed, they
sometimes show an almost pathological fear that those concerned
with formal analysis may be deceived into supposing that nature is
as coherently organized and as simple as are their intellectual con-
structions.

Nor does the familiar distinction between appearance and reality
play any role in their thinking about nature, since the term “reality”

Philosophy and the American Temper [ 55 1

designates no inherently basic substance in the -world but at best
only a humanly valuable phase of existence. Accordingly, every
quality and event is a genuine occurrence in some complex process
or context, and possesses ascertamable relations and functions in that
context. There is, however, no one context which is relevant to the
occurrence of everything, there is no absolutely privileged context.
It is this emphasis upon the contextual conditions for the occurrence
and for the manifested properties of everything whatsoever— upon
the fact that a quality is an objective constituent of nature even
though its existence depends on the relations in which it stands to
other things— which explains the adjective in the label “contextual-
istic naturalism.”

It is inevitable that on these assumptions contextualistic naturalism
should be vigorously anti-reductionist. Unlike earlier forms of
naturalism, it maintains that the world contains at least as many
qualitatively distinct features as are disclosed in human experience,
and not a fewer number of them. The widespread view exemplified
in such claims as that the playing of a Bach Chaconne is “nothing
but” a scraping of horsehair across catgut, or that the human scene
is “nothing but” an aggregation of certain allegedly “ultimate” ele-
ments, is therefore rejected as resting upon patent confusions.
Modem physics and modern biopsychology are taken seriously by
contextualistic naturalists, and current theories concerning the elec-
trical structure of matter and the biophysical basis of human action
are assumed to be well-grounded in competent evidence. But they
fail to see any merit in the argument according to which, simply
because complex organizations of the elementary particles of modem
physics constitute the conditions for the occurrence of familiar
events and processes, the characteristic behaviors of such complex
wholes are indistinguishably identical with the behaviors of their
differently organized parts.

It follows that the human scene is as much an integral part of
nature, and as valid a subject for the philosopher's concern with
basic features of existence, as is any of its other sectors. As contex-
tualistic naturalism views them, man and his works are not inexpli-
cable occurrences, incomparable in every respect with other natural
processes. Men come into being and act the way they do only because
of the operations of natural forces, and they perish or cease to
behave as men when forces no less natural dismpt the normal or-

[ 56 ] Sovereign Reason

ganization of their bodies and of their fields of behavior. On the
other hand, though the conditions of man’s life are thus contmuous
with the rest of nature, his behavior exhibits features which are
discontinuous with other parts of existence. For man is not simply
another odd item in the inexhaustible catalogue of created things. He
possesses the apparently unique gift of an inquiring mind, which
enables him not only to act under the compulsion of internal springs
of action and external pressures, but also to direct his impulses and
to master many of the forces in his environment.

This gift of intelligence man owes to the organization of his body
and the character of his environment, and no supernatural agency
or disembodied soul is required to explain it. It is this organization,
complicated by the structure of his surroundings, which also ac-
counts for men’s moral and evaluative behaviors. The possession
of needs and preferences, and the exercise of reflection upon them
in the interest of fulfilling and harmonizing them, are as natural to
man as is, for example, the property of a magnet to repel or attract
another magnet. In any event, it is in the radical plurality of men’s
needs and in the limitations which their physical and social environ-
ment impose upon their fulfillment, that contextualistic naturalism
locates the source and urgency of moral problems. Accordingly, it
does not conceive the primary moral problem to be that of discov-
ering or actually instituting some fixed set of ethical norms valid
everywhere and for all time. For basic moral problems are plural
in number and specific in character, and are concerned with the
adjustment, in the light of causes and consequences, of competing
impulses occurring in specific environmental contexts. There can
therefore be no general or final solution to the moral predicaments
of mankind; the moral problem is the perennial one of finding ways
and means for eliminating needless suflFering and for organizing in
a reasonable manner the energies of men.

The advocacy of a responsible intellectual method, especially in
matters pertinent to social and ethical issues as well as in philosophy,
is thus an emphatic strain in the writings of contextualistic natural-
ists. For reliable knowledge is the end-product of a reflective proc-
ess, involving the use of experimental controls over ideas which
initially have the status of tentative hypotheses; and it is this pro-
cedure which must be employed if reliable knowledge and reason-
able evaluations are to be attained in the settlement of social and

Philosophy and the American Te777per [ 57 ]

moral conflicts. This method of science supplies no guarantees
against error, it does not preclude alternative solutions to problems,
and it certifies none of its conclusions as eternally valid. But since it
is in essence a self-corrective method, and involves the continued
criticism of its findings in the light of evidence capable of public
inspection, it is a method which can discover its own errors. It is
in any case the sole method which has historically shown itself able
to yield intellectual and practical mastery over various segments of
nature. From the systematic extension of the use of this method to
the problems of men, contextualistic naturalists confidently antici-
pate an increased moral enlightenment.

Compared with many fashionable philosophies contextualistic
naturalism is almost prosaically sober. It contributes to the current
intellectual scene no apocalyptic visions, no thunderous absolutes,
no unshakeable certainties. It offers no spectacular promises of sal-
vation. It is essentially scientific and secular in temper, but confident
that the concentration of scientific methods upon specific problems
will yield a rich harvesf of genuine knowledge. It is sane and rea-
sonable at a time when the tides of irrationalism run high in the
world and when substitutes for the Appolonian virtues are at a
premium. It expresses the convictions of a people confident that a
bold but disciplined intelligence is still a creative power in the world.

4

Charles Peirce's
Guesses at the Riddle

With the publication of his Collected Papers^ by Harvard Uni-
versity a measure of justice is being done to Charles Peirce, long
neglected except by a select few students. Unfortunately, the hand-
some volumes of this edition can not undo the damage which both
Peirce and philosophy have suffered when he was not permitted,
except for a brief period, to receive the intellectual and literary
discipline which regular university teaching would have given him.
His was an erratic temperament, as his writings amply testify. His
conception of philosophy was architectonic, and he tried to write
it in a grand manner; but most of the hitherto unpublished material
which has appeared thus far is obscure, uneven in quality, and,
in spite of the best efforts of his editors, unsystematic. As he

I, Collected Papers of Charles Saunders Peirce, Edited by Charles Hart-
shome and Paul Weiss. Cambridge; Harvard University Press. VoL I, 1931.
Pp. xvi + 393* Vol. II, 1932. Pp. xii + 535-

[58]

Charles Peirce^s Guesses at the Riddle [ 59 ]

himself remarked in 1903, “All that you can find in print of my
work on logic are simply scattered outcroppings here and there
of a rich vein which remains unpublished. Most of it I suppose has
been written down; but no human being could ever put together the
fragments. I could not myself do so.” It is not surprising, there-
fore, that the writings in these first two volumes which are best
from the point of view of clarity, consistency, and organization, are
the articles published during his own hfetime.

Until all the ten volumes will have been published it is impossible
to evaluate adequately even the first two. Their contents will sug-
gest, to anyone familiar with the literature of the last quarter-
century, many of the central ideas of better-known writers. It is
easy to find something of Husserl, Whitehead, Santayana, Wittgen-
stein and* the logical positivists, Hilbert, Brouwer, and others, in the
hints thrown out by Peirce, but left undeveloped. But whether
these “anticipations” can legitimately be read out of Peirce, in-
stead of read into him, only the later volumes will perhaps definitely
decide. It is not impossible that he may become everything to all
men, and that rationalists and empiricists, naturalists and idealists,
realists and nominalists, may all read him for support as well as
stimulation. Peirce was often his own audience,^ and he could af-
ford to be voluminous, repetitious, sketchy, and obscurely subtle.
But to others it is not always evident what value much of his analy-
sis has for clarifying problems of philosophy or science. His readers
get an impression of someone packing and preparing for an im-
portant tour, but who somehow never crosses the gates of his own
familiar city: we are shown the itinerary and given glowing prom-
ises of what is in store for us, but alas! too frequently the manu-
script breaks off just before the train is scheduled to leave.

Not even a complete summary can be given, in brief compass, of
the contents of these volumes. This review must confine itself to a
statement of just three important themes, and the interested reader
must be left to examine at fibrst hand many of the interesting varia-
tions which Peirce embroiders upon them.

2. He supplied one manuscript with the following heading: ‘Notes for a
Book, to be entitled ‘A Guess at the Riddle,’ with a Vignette of the Sphynx
below the Tide. And this book, if ever written, as it soon will be if I am
in a situation to do it, will be one of the births of time.”

[6o]

Sovereign Reason

I.

The Peirce who is familiar to readers of his published writings
is usually the mathematical logician and student of scientific method.
But his scientific interests seem to have been subordinate to a far-
flung metaphysics, and the substantial part of Volume I is devoted
to an analysis and a speculative use of the categories. He desired
to draw up a list of fundamental categories such that for a long
future the intellectual achievements of man would appear simply
as corroborative details, and one of his earliest pubhshed papers was
already concerned with this task. Unfortunately, Peirce had a fond-
ness for trichotomous divisions, and so he recognized just three
fundamental categories: Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. But
Secondness is analyzable into two species, the second of which is
again divisible into two species, and so on; while Thirdness is
analyzable into three kinds, the second of which is divisible into two
varieties, and so on, and the third of which is divisible into three
varieties, etc. His thought appears in a very artificial form indeed,
although he had enough sense of humor to see how crack-brained his
triadic scheme must appear to the general reader (1.364).®

Peirce has not definitely stated what status he assigns to the cate-
gories. But they are frequently proposed as the directly apprehended
logical simples into which the complexity of whatever is presented
may be analyzed. For his object is to establish a science of phanero-
scopy (phenomenology) which would describe the total of what-
ever is present to the mind in any way (phaneron), irrespective
of the “realities” to which the phanerons correspond or of their
physical and psychological conditions (1.287).“* Now the study of
the phaneron, Peirce claims, shows it to contain three indecompos-
able elements or aspects, which are the three categories. But he was
careful to point out that these elements are not existentially sep-^
aratey and that their analysis consists only in tracing out the rela-
tions between features isolated logically (1.294). The elements of

3. The references are to volume and paragraph.

4. This approach has many obvious afi^ations with the “pj^esuppositionless”
studies of essences by Descartes, Husserl, and Santayana, although in the
light of Peirce’s devastating critique of the Augustinian-Cartesian philosophy
in his earliest papers, too much can not be made of this similarity. And after
the nature of Thirdness has been discussed it will be seen how full of pre-
suppositions Peirce’s aualysis really is.

Charles Peirce^ s Guesses at the Riddle [ 6i ]

the phaneron are indecomposable, because they show no differences
in internal logical structure, although there are differences in the
structure of their possible compounds (1.288, 1.291). The cate-
gories seem to be, therefore, factors continually present in all expe-
rience (1.134), and indissolubly intertwined with one another. We
may distinguish the factors from one another, but we can not, even
in imagination, dissociate them from one another or from other con-
ceptions. We may indeed prescind or suppose some from the others
in the same way as we prescind or suppose space from color (1*353);
but we must never regard them as atoms out of which anything is
constructed, since they are always only distinctions in everything
presented (1.286).

Although the categories primarily characterize the phaneron,
Peirce also regards them as representing congenital tendencies of
the mind, and admits that so far he agrees with Kant. But he makes
a careful study of the facts in various fields in order to confirm the
pervasiveness of three modes of being (1.374); for he regards the list
of categories as “a table of conceptions drawn from the logical
analysis of thought and regarded as applicable to being” (1.300).
It is difficult to evaluate his performance, since the analogies he
finds between features in different subject-matters are very tenuous,
the argument is often post hoc, and he himself points out in one case
at least that the categories he finds in one domain do not correspond
precisely with those in another (1.452). He uses (and thereby
abuses) propositions in the general theory of conics to illustrate
fundamental metaphysical distinctions, and the outcome is very
mystifying metaphysics indeed (1.362). Finally, it must be remem-
bered that Peirce admits his triad of categories does not exhaust all
the categories (1.525), so that there is reason to suppose that his
predilection for trichotomies was nurtured by his studies in the
logic of relations; although what the intimate connection is between
these studies and his metaphysics Peirce leaves the reader to guess
at random.

Let us turn to the categories themselves. The Category of First-
ness indicates the aspect of freshness, life, freedom, variety, and
spontaneity in the phaneron. Thus it would seem that Firstness
presents the phase of atomicity, specificity, or sheer quality in ex-
perience. A quality is just what it is, and in its sheer immediacy
is utterly disconnected with any other quality. On the other hand

[62] Sovereign Reason

Peirce regards Firstness as a “pure nature” or quality to which
embodiment and localization are essentially foreign (1.303). A
quality is eternal, independent of time or of any realization (1.420);
it is simply a “may~be,” whose nature is that it might be a specific
moment in a phaneron. Nevertheless Firstness is not a general or
universal, since to be a universal involves reference to embodiment
and localization (1.304).

It IS not easy to reconcile these various characterizations of First-
ness. Peirce seems to shuttle back and forth between regarding First-
ness as the absolutely specific, immediate quality in the phaneron,
as a determination which is not an “abstract suchness” (1.303, 1.306)
on the one hand; and on the other hand, regarding Firstness as pure
potentials, involving a variety and spontaneity which “is not defi-
nitely there,” mere “may-bes” not necessarily realized (1.373). He
thus alternates between conceiving Firstness as being simply a dis-
tinction within the phaneron, and conceiving it as a disembodied but
substantial essence. Firstness is at the same time a mere “possibil-
ity” and the element of spontaneity; it is declared to lack generality,
and also to be of the nature of a general, capable of further de-
terminations (1.447). Peirce himself acknowledged that “possibil-
ity” was a misnomer for firstness, since it mistakenly suggested a
relation to what exists (1.531). But he adds a final touch to these
confusions when he identifies Firstness or quality, not with immedi-
ate, physically inefiicacious quality, nor with an abstract isolated
possibility, but with the power bodies have of determining future
manifestations of inefiicacious qualities (1.422). Firstness is then
conceived as a dynamic relation, and so an element of law or regu-
larity (Thirdness) is introduced into what started out to be the
element of spontaneity.

Further difiiculties arise when the connection of qualities with
feelings is examined. A feeling for Peirce is an element of imme-
diate consciousness, a quality of it which is not an event (1.306);
and a quality in general is something which is vivid and conscious
(1.357). There is thus a tendency to identify qualities with feel-
ings, and so it is only a short step to impute feelings to whatever has
qualities, for example, to inorganic matter. Indeed, “dead matter”
can excite feelings in us, only because dead matter isn’t dead at all
(1.311). Consequently, Peirce must be included among those who
use with abandon an uncritically formulated principle of continuity.

Charles Peirce's Guesses at the Riddle [ 63 ]

Like can come only from the like, and so the qualities which humans
enjoy are communicable and find their counterparts in non-human
situations. “I am confident,” Pence declares, ‘‘that a bull and I feel
much alike at the sight of a red rag” (1.3 14). Far be it from me
to question this assertion, especially since what it means is most
obscure. I do not see, however, how it and similar statements are
reconcilable with Peirce’s logical pragmatism. He himself declared
that in immediate experience there is no knowledge^ so that if First-
ness indicates the element of spontaneity, every description must be
false to it ( 1 . 357 ). I think this is true, because of that which
is wholly immediate nothing whatsoever can be said, for the simple
reason that the wholly immediate is not the subject-matter for any
saying.

We turn to the second category. Secondness indicates the ele-
ment of brute fact, struggle, actuality. It points to fact, within
which distinct elements stand in opposition to one another, for all
existence is always a matter of blind force. Facts are determinate
with respect to every character. They involve physical thmgs act-
ing upon one another hie et nunc; these physical things are the sum
of all the consequences of their so acting here and now. But Peirce
points out that the individual mode of behavior indicated by Second-
ness is not determined by any law (1.440); a stone falling here and
now is not made to do so by any law of nature (1.323). Hence the
proposition that every event is precisely determined must be aban-
doned, since it is only approximately true (1.402).

Secondness thus points to the element of contingency, of some-
thing “accidently actual” in the phaneron (1.427). Peirce would
have been sympathetic with recent attempts to revive causality as a
distinct category not analyzable into uniform succession (1.325).
For Secondness denotes a necessity which is natural, and also uncon-
ditional, forceful, ultimate, a quality of operative events. At the
same time, Secondness points to a radical indeterminism in the be-
havior of nature, so that Peirce anticipated in general outline the
statistical interpretation of natural laws.

Unfortunately, but perhaps inevitably, Peirce’s discussion of
Secondness is almost entirely in anthropomorphic language. We may
cite as examples his characterization of fact as something which
“fights its way into existence; for it exists by virtue of the opposi-
tions which it involves” (1.432); and “the existence of facts consists

[ 64 ] Sovereign Reason

in fight” (1.435). This anthropomorphism Peirce often regards as a
virtue, and once again a principle of continuity is employed to read
strife, struggle, effort, which are features of human life, as generic
traits of all nature. But where shall one draw the line— why not
read desire, revulsion, love, into every nook and cranny of the world
as well? Peirce, like many contemporary thinkers, did not hesitate
at times to draw just such conclusions. Now the world may, in-
deed, be populated with many more qualities than we ordinarily sup-
pose. But why should we uncritically admit them, at the behest of
a dubiously stated principle of continuity? Why should we over-
look the fact that the qualities we experience are functions, in part
at least, of the interaction of our own bodies with the rest of nature,
and that they can not therefore be imputed to segments of the world
where such interaction is not going on^^

An equally serious shortcoming is Peirce’s failure to analyze the
meaning of contingency, and to state how he conceives an event to
exhibit a contingent aspect and also to illustrate a uniformity. Is
the contingency of an event an absolute* character of it, an im-
mediate quality of a hie et nunc operation; is it a relational char-
acter, so that an event has a contingent aspect with respect to one
set of circumstances but not to another set; is it synonymous with
the sheer plurality and variety of things; or is it all these things
and something else besides^ This problem is especially important
for Peirce, because as we shall see, uniformity is taken by him as a
temporally derivative character of events.

Let us examine the final category. The category of Thirdness
introduces the element of determination by law. A law is the mode
of being which consists in 'future facts (of Secondness) taking on
determinate general characters (1.26); a law is how an endless
future must continue to be (1.536). Thus, Thirdness involves the
idea of something general, which can not ever be completely ac-
tualized and so refers to an indefinite future. Thirdness or law,
according to Peirce, is akin to thought; it can be produced and
grow, it can be communicated and is general. It addresses itself
to two realms: as general, it concerns itself with the realm of possi-
bility or quality; as factual, it refers to the actual world (1.420).
Since Thirdness is involved in all communication, the correct analy-
sis of the category leads inevitably to the study of the nature of

Charles Peirce^ s Guesses at the Riddle [ 65 ]

signs. But we will examine this aspect of the matter in the next
section.

At this point, let us see the use Peirce makes of his categories in
his cosmogonical speculations. According to him, every sound meta-
physics must be evolutionary. This dictum is based largely on the
further dictum that what needs to be explained is not the variety,
freshness, and unpredictability of things, but the uniformities which
they exhibit. Uniformity must be “explained” by showing how,
out of a primal spontaneity, together with a tendency in the flux
to take on habits, laws or habits have evolved (1.175). In a sense,
therefore, Thirdness is not as “ultimate” a category as Firstness,
since regularity grows out of pure chance or Firstness (1.407). In
the infinitely distant past there was no law, only chaos together
with a tendency toward uniformity or the elimination of inde-
terminacy (1.409). Hence the three active elements in the universe
are chance, law, and the tendency for things to take on habits

Is it possible to make a coherent scheme out of all this? In the
first place, let us recall shat the categories should be regarded as
distinctions within the phaneron, not as active elements out of which
whatever exists is to be constructed. However, if we also recall
that phaneroscopy has nothing to do with the question of how far
the phaneron corresponds to any reality, what meaning shall we
assign to Secondness and Thirdness which specifically involve ref-
erence to the actual world? Can anyone, least of all Peirce, main-
tain that the nature of law is to be learned independently of the
operations of “real” beings and of the use of the discursive methods
of the sciences? Indeed, if there is nothing in immediate conscious-
ness except feeling or quality (1.3 17), how can the phaneron ex-
hibit elements of Secondness and Thirdness? Peirce himself declares
that law unrealized is merely a pure first, a quality possessed, and
is not a “genuine” law.

Secondly, is the idea of law as something active anything other
than Plotinian and Schellingian poetry^ It is true that Peirce calls
Thirdness a law only when we contemplate it from the outside,
while if “we see both sides” it shows itself to be akin to thought
(1,420). But change of terminology does not always solve a diffi-
culty, and Peirce does not show how the radical indeterminacy of
fact is compatible with the activity of thought or law in determining
what future facts are to be.

[ 66 ] Sovereign Reason

Thirdly, what is to be said for the dictum that uniformities, and
only uniformities, require explanation^ Is it not patent that we
sometimes seek to explain a regularity and at other times the lack
of regularity^ For what, anyway, is an explanation^ Is it not the
case that we “explain” an event or law when we exhibit it as an
element in a more comprehensive order or uniformity? Thus we
explain why a glass breaks when hot water is poured into it, by
showing that types of relations, like the flow of heat, the elasticity
of a substance, and the unequal expansion of a substance, are ex-
hibited in the explicandum. These types, if they are to explain,
must be pervasive modes of behavior, must be what are called
“regularities ” Peirce himself is compelled to take note of them.
He can not possibly get order and connection by simply taking
them as growths from a primal chaos; he must take for granted some
form of order, e.g., a tendency in things to take on and conserve
habits. For the hypothetical chaos is completely unintelligible, and
can not be the explanation of anything. One may explain a specific
law by showing it to be the consequence<rof a more inclusive order.
But one can not explain order as such, since it is the principle of
explanation of everything else. What order we take as primary in
any inquiry depends upon the state of our knowledge and the de-
mands of the problem; some order we must assume, just as some
plurality must be taken for granted if anything is to be explained,
Peirce was motivated in his cosmogony by a bias toward a spiritual-
istic interpretation of the cosmos, and by an understandable reaction
to philosophies of his day which attempted to derive the variety of
things from a primal homogeneity. The moral is that it is Just as
much a mistake to deny an ultimate specificity and variety, as it is
to deny an inexpugnable order. It is instructive to compare Peirce
with Spinoza. Both recognized nature to possess a structure and
also to contain an inexhaustible variety. Peirce chose to emphasize
the latter and to regard the former as derivative. But I think Spinoza
was both sounder and wiser when he included in Part I of the
Ethics Prop. 15 as well as Prop. 28.®

5. Prop. XV. “Whatever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be,
or be conceived ”

Prop. XXyill. “Every individual thing, or everything which is finite and
has a conditioned existence, cannot exist or be conditioned to act, unless it

Charles Peirce^s Guesses at the Riddle [ 67 ]

Finally, one must seriously question Peirce’s facile reduction of
laws of nature to “habits.” No doubt there is an analogy, often a
fruitful one, and no suggestive hypothesis should be neglected. But
do we know the nature of human habits so well that we can pretend
to throw light on the nature of laws by using the former to explain
the latter? What real evidence is there for Peirce’s assumption
that natural laws are like habits which human beings take on and
occasionally drop^ It is true that almost all our scientific terms,
even the most neutral ones, are infected with meanings carried over
from the specifically human scene. But this should not be taken
as a license to exercise one’s speculative fancy and so regard proc-
esses in all parts of nature as simply human processes writ large.
The issue is not between affirming immutable laws of nature and
affirming the contrary. The flux is what it is, and why should a
naturahst on a priori grounds deny anything of it^ But whatever
the flux is, the issue is to examine any allegation concerning it with
scrupulous care, in philosophy as well as in science. And if it is
alleged that laws grow and change, while at the same time laws are
not identified with any segment of the flux, especial care should be
taken to determine the sense in which laws “change,” in view of the
fact that change is taken as a fundamental character of the flux
itself.

2.

Although the triad of categories is a persistant melody running
through most of Peirce’s writings, many of his doctrines can be
understood better in connection with his theory of signs. The
magnificent series of papers in the Journal of Speculative Philoso-
phy y in which he broke with the Cartesian tradition dominating
modern philosophy, was inspired by his recognition of the function
of signs in thought. Like Aristotle, Peirce was impressed by the
fact that language is the medium in which the rationality of the
world becomes expressed and communicated; and he went so far as
to say that “the woof and warp of all thought and all research is

be conditioned for existence and action by a cause other than itself, which
is also finite, and has a conditioned existence; and hkewise this cause cannot
in its turn exist, or be conditioned to act, unless it be conditioned for existence
and action by another cause, which also is finite, and has a conditioned
existence, and so on to infinity.” Spinoza’s Ethics, Part I, Elwes translation.

[ 68 ] Sovereign Reaso 7 i

symbols, and the life of thought and science is the life inherent in
symbols” (2.220), “My language,” he declared, “is the sum total
of myself, for the man is the thought. The identity of man consists
m the consistency of what he does and thinks, and consistency is the
intellectual character of a thing, i.e., is its expressing something.”
Representation or the operation of signs (mediation or Thirdness) is
therefore one of the fundamental categories, and to its study Peirce
devoted his best energies.

Peirce’s ideas on signs are the most difficult and obscure of all
he set down on paper. Only a meager outline is here attempted.
Anything whatsoever (e.g., physical object, image, quality, thought)
may be a sign, so that signs differ from one another in several im-
portant ways. But in any case, every sign involves a triadic rela-
tion. For in every case where a sign functions, there is first, the
sign with its own material quality; secondly, there is the object of
which it is a sign, and which it represents in some respect (the
ground ) ; and thirdly, there is the thought to which it is addressed,
the interpretant to which it is a sign. In Volume II Peirce dis-
cusses each one of these three aspects of the sign, each aspect yield-
ing three divisions.®

And first, when we attend to the material quality of signs, we
find three types: a sign may be a pure quality or possibility, some-
thing which as a pure quality is disembodied, even though it can not
actually function as a sign until embodied (a qmlisign); or it may
be an actual existent, a physical thing or event (a sinsign); or
finally, it may be a general law, rule, or habit (a legisign). Every
sinsign clearly must involve qualisigns, while every legisign func-
tions through sinsigns which are instances or “replicas” of it.
Thus, in one sense, each time “three” occurs on a page there is a
distinct word, each being a sinsign; but in another sense, these
distinct sinsigns stand for the very same word (legisign), which is
a general rule or convention for the production of sinsigns. All
conventional marks are signs not because they can be seen or
touched, but because they are replicas of a type which signifies
through its instances (2.244).

Secondly, when the sign is studied with respect to the relation
between it and its object, the following three types are found: a

6. In a later volume he will distinguish ten trichotomous divisions, giving
sixty-six independent classes of signs.

Charles Peirce^ s Guesses at the Riddle [ 69 ]

sign IS an icon when it refers to an object because of its own in-
trinsic features, which nevertheless it possesses in common with its
object (e.g., a diagram or picture); it is an mdex when it is really
(dynamically) affected by its object (e.g., a street cry, the rolling
gait of a man as a sign of his being a sailor, or a weather-cock);
it is a symbol^ when it operates to be interpreted by virtue of a law
or association of general ideas (e.g., a proposition, all conventional
signs). Peirce regarded this as the most important division of signs.
The only way we have of communicating and thinking, according
to him, is by means of direct or indirect use of icons (2.278). But
icons generally function as constituents of indices, which in turn
are constituents of symbols, and symbols, being general, involve
laws referring to the indefinite future, and so require legisigns and
sinsigns to function (2.293).

Thirdly, when the sign is examined with respect to what its in-
terpretant understands it to represent, the following three types are
found: when the sign is taken as representing a kind of possible
object or quality, when in represents an object merely with respect
to its characters, it is a rheme (in modem terminology, a proposi-
tional function); when it is taken as a sign of actual existence, when
it represents its objects with respect to the actual existence of the
object, it is a dicisign; when it is taken as a sign of law or regular-
ity, it is an argument (2.252),

If we combine these three sets of distinctions in all possible ways,
we get twenty-seven (i.e., 3^) classes of signs, only ten of which are
independent. Peirce discusses them with great subtlety. We can
not report his analyses, but turn instead to some of the applications
he makes of his studies on the role of signs in discursive reasoning.

(a) The nature of meaning. It is not intended to add here an-
other specimen to the sixteen meanings of ^‘meaning” captured by
Ogden and Richards. I only wish to point out that most analyses
of meaning have gone off the track because they identify meaning
with some essense, image, or thought, instead of studying the struc-
ture of the situations in which meanings occur. Peirce^s discussion
of signs should make us aware that “meaning” is a triadic relation
involving a sign, its object, and its interpreter, so that an exclusive
concentration upon one of these terms must of necessity yield an
inadequate analysis of the nature of meaning. It may be thought
that the specific introduction of the interpreter as a factor in the

[ 70 ] Sovereign Reason

analysis of meaning, involves the introduction of irrelevant psy-
chology which will only becloud a very beclouded problem. But
quite the contrary is the case. For this analysis isolates the differ-
ent factors in a meaning situation, allows us to explore the general
conditions under which signs may adequately represent their ob-
jects irrespective of any specific interpreter, and then emphasizes
the ineradicable role of the interpreter. Thus we can discover that
a sign must be a “logical map” or icon of its object if it is to
represent it adequately; and we can also consider the social factors
which enter into the activities of the interpreter which determine
how he interprets signs, without however altering the validity of
the first analysis. Meanings are not qualities or essences, they are
the structure of certain situations in which such triadic relations
are exhibited.

Consider, furthermore, the problem as to the nature of proposi-
tions. A proposition is sometimes identified with judgment, under-
stood as a psychological act, sometimes with a fact or state of
affairs; sometimes with a substantial, non^temporal, non-spatial en-
tity or essense; sometimes with a sentence in all its particularity.
Pence, on the other hand, is able to avoid both the hypostasis and
the psychologizing of propositions by analyzing them as dicent sym-
bols which are legtsigns. Hence a proposition is a sign, and requires
a three-fold reference: it is a sign which is connected with its object
by an association of general ideas; it is dynamically connected with
its object if it is true, and is interpreted as representing a situation
located in the realm investigated; and it also has a determinate ma-
terial quality, determined by a general rule or convention, so that
^^cogito^^ and “I think” stand for the same proposition.

It is also relevant to mention in this connection that most of the
recent work in symbolic logic has devoted exclusive attention to
the iconic feature of signs, and has neglected their very important
indexicalj symbolical^ and argumentative aspects. The dissatisfac-
tion which many philosophers have felt with symbolic logic may
perhaps be explained on this ground. And it is not too much to say
that an adequate philosophy of logic will not be achieved until the
neglected features of signs receive a complete study.

(b). The doctrine of fallibilism^ Every sign addresses itself to
some thought or interpreter, and this in turn, according to Peirce,
is a sign, which must address itself to another thought, and so on

Charles Peirce^ s Guesses at the Riddle [71]

without limit. This indicates the nature of all discursive thought,
and it is largely for this reason that he denied knowledge to be im-
mediate apprehension. All cognition requires mediation, interpreta-
tion, and reference to an indefinite future. There can be no absolute
finality or complete certitude, since the process of interpretation is
an unlimited one. The method of science is self-corrective. We
can not doubt all things at once; but without being dogmatic or
sceptical, we can construct hypotheses, submit them to empirical
tests, reconsider the hypotheses and tests in terms of other hypotheses
and observations, and so on endlessly. Thus while the sciences aim
at exactitude, universality, and complete certitude, these are ideal
limits which can never reach, and which it is suicidal for them to
claim to have reached. All our knowledge, in the natural sciences
as well as in mathematics, is fallible.

The import of this doctrine will be clearer if we bear in mind
that the complete certitude Peirce denies we can attain, is not a
psychological state of strong conviction, but is a complete logical
ground for the propositions we assert. The following considerations
will bear this out.

(1) Peirce makes clear that it is the fallibility of discursive
thought which he is asserting, and that he is not denying the im-
mediacy of direct experience. Kant’s sharp distinction between
observation and reflection he believes is mistaken, because all sig-
nificant observation involves interpretation, so that reasoning does
not begin after observation is over (1.35). The consequences of
this criticism, as everyone knows, are momentous for the theory of
science. And he has a crushing retort to those who claim absolute
certainty for the objects of direct experience: ‘‘Direct experience
is neither certain nor uncertain, because it alErms nothing— it just
is, ... It involves no error, because it testifies to nothing but its own
appearance. For the same reason, it affords no certainty” (1.145).

(2) The claim to infallibility is only a hindrance to inquiry, since
what we want to know concerning any proposition is whether it is
well supported by evidence. The claim to finality, however, con-
fuses the question of the logical value of the evidence with the ques-
tion as to the psychological certitude we may possess. Accordingly,
since the first rule of reason is “Do not block the way of inquiry”
( 1. 1 35), we may dismiss as obstacles the claims that we have absolute
certitude, that there is something we can never know, that some-

[ji] Sovereign Reason

thing or other is basic or absolutely simple, and that some law or
other has received its perfect formulation.

{3) It is a very crude analysis which declares that things are
sharply cut off from one another, like the traditional pictures of
atoms as billiard balls. The contrary is the case, according to Peirce,
for '‘all thmgs swim in continua.” Our concepts, too, shade off into
penumbral regions of indeterminacy, so that our knowledge “swims
in a continuum of uncertainty and indeterminacy” (1.171). Hence
the “laws of nature” must be interpreted as describing the approxi-
mate behavior of large groups, and do not describe without serious
qualifications the behavior of their individual members (i 156).

(4) A pragmatic theory of meaning involves an implicit refer-
ence to the future in every judgment about matters of fact. To call
a piece of stone hard^ is to predict how it will behave and what
effects it will have in the future (1.615). Hence every present judg-
ment is subject to correction, since it involves an endless series of
verifications. Science is therefore not so much of a body of estab-
lished truth, as a diligent search or proem of inquiry into truth
(i-44)-

Against the doctrine of fallibilism many thinkers will no doubt
raise the objection that we can not be said to “know,” unless what
we know is in fact the case. Anyone claiming to “know” that the
earth is flat, it will be said, claims what is false, for we could know
that proposition to be true only if the earth were indeed flat. Hence,
if there is such a thing as knowledge, it must be absolutely certain;
on Peirce’s view, however, it will be urged, we may have opinion
and belief, but never authentic knowledge, since knowledge is not
subject to revision. To this objection there is only one reply.
Knowledge so defined that when we have it we can not possibly be
in error, is the ideal goal to which we strive; but it is Peirce’s claim
that we have not yet anything to illustrate such a knowledge beyond
every possible doubt. It may well be that certain propositions claimed
as knowledge will never be significantly challenged. The indubility
that attaches to such propositions comes, however, not from any
analysis of the nature of knowledge nor from a psychological sense
of certitude, but from the fact that they are supported by logically
overwhelming evidence. Nevertheless, in all dscursive thinking
there is always the possibility that we are mistaken in what we allege
to know. There are therefore no ultimate first principles intuitively

Charles Peirce's Guesses at the Riddle [ 73 ]

reached which are the bed-rock of all certitude. There is only science
as a self-corrective process, steering midway between a stultifying
scepticism and an unimaginative dogmatism.

(c) Logic and mathematics. But what does Peirce do with logic
and mathematics, it will be asked. Can he successfully extend the
principle of fallibilism to apply to them? The attempt to do so is
indeed one of the most interesting features of Peirce’s writings on
logic; and it merits careful study because he was bitterly hostile
to the psychologizing logicians of his day.

Logic in its broadest sense is understood by him to be general
semeiotic, or the science of what must be and ought to be the nature
of true representations or signs (1.444, 1.539). Logic is thus inex-
tricably related to language. Corresponding to the three-fold nature
of signs, it has three departments: critical logic, the theory of the
conditions for the truth of signs; speculative grammar, the theory
of the nature of signs in all their aspects; and speculative rhetoric,
or the theory of the conditions of reference of signs to their inter-
pretants (2.93). The content of speculative grammar has already
been indicated; and apparently Peirce wrote nothing systematically
on speculative rhetoric, in spite of his belief that general methods
could be stated for attacking the solution of problems (2.108). There
remains to indicate something concerning the nature of critical
logic.

The task of critical logic is the classification of arguments with
respect to the form of their constituent propositions and the fre-
quency with which true premises of a determinate type yield true
conclusions. Each argument requires a habit of reference, which
when formulated is the leading principle or canon of that type of
argument. These habits are general since they refer to an indefinite
future, and in a determinate class of arguments commit us to few
or no false conclusions (2.148, 2.446). Some leading principles are
perfectly general or formal: they are involved in every set of prem-
isses, and are the logical principles par excellence; others have a
more restricted generality, and are material principles (2.466, 2.589).

The consequences of taking leading principles or generalized
habits as the basis for valid inference are many. It enables Peirce to
supply an objective, matter-of-fact foundation for all inference, and
so indicate the relevance of material considerations in formal logic.
The naturalistic strain in him shows itself at its best in his discus-

[ 74 ] Sovereign Reason

sions of the metaphysical grounds of logical canons of inference
(2.710 ff). It also enables him to treat in a unified manner both nec-
essary and probable reasonmg, since the former is a hniitmg case of
the latter when the leading principles employed have relative truth-
frequencies whose values are always unity (2.696). It permits him
to do justice to the purely mechanical element in inference, and
admit that logical machines perform inferences even though they
do not think (2 59). And it permits him to avoid a crude empiri-
cism with respect to logic, by associating the canons of deductive
or explicative inference with the analysis of stgnsy so that he can
retain his naturalism and still admit that the experiential element m
logic is all but ml (2.65).

Nevertheless, not everything that Peirce says about inference is
crystal clear or consistent. There remains an unbridgeable gap
between probable and necessary reasoning which he reluctantly ad-
mits when he asserts that a class of arguments whose relative truth-
frequency is unity, does not therefore belong to the class of neces-
sary inferences (2.369). And when he asserts that the process of
substitution, so vital in formal reasoning, is non-inferential, simply
because the propositional forms employed have no specific meaning
or reference, he exhibits serious limitations in his understanding of
the distinctive marks of inference (2.496).

Let us turn, however, to his analysis of deductive reasoning and
to the incidence of the doctrine of fallibilism upon it. We can best
do this in connection with his discussion of mathematical reasoning.
Peirce was profoundly influenced by F. A. Lange’s Logische Studien
and always maintained that both logic and mathematics were “ob-
servational sciences.” This apergu depends on recognizing that all
reasoning is by means of and upon signs. In mathematics, for ex-
ample, we construct a diagram (i.e., any complex sign) according to
a general rule; we observe relations between parts of the diagram
not stated explicitly by the rule; we show that the diagram is a fair
sample of all the diagrams determined by the rule, so that these rela-
tions hold always (or at least in a certain proportion of cases) for
any such diagram; and finally we state these relations in general
terms as the necessary (or probable) conclusion of the investigation^

7. In this emphasis upon the role of diagrams Peirce anticipated much of
the mathernaocal philosophy of Hilbert, although his motivation is clearly
different. Like Hilbert, he denies that mathematics ever requires the aid of

Charles Peirce^ s Guesses at the Riddle [75]

(1.54, 1.66). In the sense, therefore, that explicative reasoning is
diagrammatic, it requires observation, since we must construct dia-
grams, at least in imagination, and observe them (1.240); and k
will be seen that the discussion does not depend on the status of the
controversy between opponents and defenders of “imageless think-
ing.” Hence, mathematics is no more infallible than other positive
sciences of observation, and every mathematical inference is accord-
ingly a matter of probability (1.248, 2.192) even though it may be
beyond every reasonable doubt.

Whatever else may be said of this extension of the principle of
fallibilism to mathematics, Peirce has rendered a service in pointing
out how logically insecure are all claims for the self-evidence of
mathematical propositions. The history of logic and mathematics
amply bears out the substance of Peirce’s warnings against an arro-
gant infaUibilism; it shows that here as elsewhere, general principles
are but slowly apprehended, require to be carefully tested out, and
the limits of their application are never completely free from doubt.
Nevertheless, there is a good deal of confusion in his contention
that mathematical reasoning is “probable.” His illustrations indicate
that he means by that characterization simply that we, and thou-
sands of others, may have blundered in adding a column of figures
or in deducing the consequences of a set of premisses. But there is
an important difference between the assertion that “7 4“ 5 = i
is only probable because we may have erred, and the assertion that
“all men are mortal” is probable because the evidence from bio-
chemistry and physiology is incomplete and because there is a
reference to a contingent future. In the first case we are dealing
with the connection of relations having the utmost generality pos-
sible and not subject to change; in the second, the subject-matter is
a segment of an incompletely determined flux. And Peirce himself,
as we shall see, stood out firmly against confusing probability with
ignorance,

Peirce’s views as to the nature of mathematics are amazingly up
to date. He saw clearly that pure mathematics is a hypothetico-
deductive science, that it does not make categorical assertions about
what exists (1.53), and that all a priori arguments about matters of

logic (1.247, 2.191), although this dictum seems to depend upon his taking
“logic” in tliis context to be a science of factj and not the formal science of
the consequences of hypotheses.

[ ] Sovereign Reason

fact are just rubbish (2.137). he did not always see the impli-
cations of these insights. Thus he thinks that ^‘two straight lines
can have only one intersection” is an evident proposition (1.130),
and that the postulates of geometry are only approximately true
(1.131). He can not therefore be regarded as having anticipated
Poincare and Duhem in their profound studies on the connection
between applied mathematics and physics.

(d) Nominalism. It is clear from what precedes that Peirce could
not agree with those for whom the only mode of being is that of
individual objects which crowd out a place for themselves by sheer
force. Such a view he characterized as nominalism, and he called
himself a realist because he recognized <the mode of being of law
or Thirdness.

Peirce takes great pains to make clear that by a law or universal
he did not mean a “thing” or a “particular ” When a man believes
that the property hardness is not invented by men as the word
“hard” is, he says, “but is really and truly in the hard things and
is one in them all, as a description of habit; disposition, or behavior,
then he is a realist” (i.27n). The mode of being of a law consists in
the fact that future acts will take on a determinate general char-
acter. Whatever is general, is something which is the object^ not the
creature of thought. And it can not be identified with any finite
set of particulars, since “its being is in the instances which it will
determine” (2.249).

Peirce’s realism is thus of the “moderate” kind. Universals or
laws are not capable of localization in space and time, nor are they
something added to the particulars so localized. They are the modes
of behavior, and the relations between modes of behavior, of things
in space and time. In spite of his flirting with the idea of “pure pos-
sibilities,” in spite of his saying that a typical mathematician must be
a Platonist for whom the universe of “actual” existence is but an
arbitrary locus in the eternal, the substance of his reflections on uni-
versals is to tie them indissolubly to the flux of things. The supposi-
tion of universals with no reference to the flux is as meaningless as
the supposition of a flux which does not embody universals (2.330).

But there is no doubt Peirce was not always faithful to his best
insights into this matter. Most puzzling is his philandering with
the idea of final causes, so that he sometimes thinks of laws and
ideas as operative and efficient. Thus, he declares that when an idea

Charles Feirce's Guesses at the Riddle [ 77 ]

is communicated “it had caused something to happen in your brain”
(1.2 1 3); that while heredity is a law and not a force, it “like other
laws doubtless avails itself of forces” (1.2 15); and that “every gen-
eral idea has more or less power of working itself out into facts”
(2.149). These expressions may be simply metaphors. It is, however,
a metaphor which strangely persists in much of the discussion of
Thirdness, and must make Peirce’s readers question the integrity of
his realism. For to endow laws with efficacy is to particularize them
into things, and is an invitation to the nominalist to ask his unan-
swerable “When> Where^” Nor is the reader’s doubt allayed when
Peirce permits himself to say that the number system is our own
creation, and that mathematical reasoning holds simply because it
deals only with the creations of the mind (1.149, 2.192). It is a
high price, even for fallibilism, to explain the unusual logical cer-
tainty of mathematics by regarding its subject-matter to be nothing
more than an entertaining convention.

, 3 -

Peirce was justly proud of his having been brought up in the
laboratory and of so having acquired the experimental frame of mind
when still young. And indeed his best developed writings are the
contributions to the theory of deduction and to the analysis of prob-
able reasoning.

The substance of his discussions of scientific method centers
around his perception that science is more sure of the correctness of
the general procedures it employs than it is of any specific result
achieved by them. Those procedures involve the specific application
of a self-corrective hypothetico-deductive method, and Peirce was
convinced of the universal applicability of that method. He was
eager to defend it against all comers, like a knight his fair lady whom
he has chosen from all the world. He could, therefore, consistently
attack the positivists for their doctrine that all hypotheses must be
capable of direct verification (2.5nn), and also declare that the full
meaning of a proposition is to be found in what it prescribes us to
do to gain perceptual experience (2.330). Even without waiting for
his complete writings on pragmatism, which will appear in later
volumes, it is possible to form a fair estimate of the studies on
scientific method contained in these volumes.

Peirce made much of the distinction between explicative and

[ 78 ] Sovereign Reason

ampliative reasoning. Explicative reasoning is either necessary or
probable^ ampliative reasoning either inductive or presumptive. We
have already considered the main features of the first, and shall
return below to a more careful analysis of probable inferences. What
is ampliative reasoning? In general, says Peirce, it is such that “the
facts summed up in the conclusion are not among those stated in the
premisses. They are different facts, as when one sees that the tide
rises m times and concludes that it will rise the next time. These are
the only inferences which increase our real knowledge, however
useful the others may be” (2.680). But let us see what its species are.

Induction consists in inferring the constitution of a class from
the constitution of samples drawn from it. We determine by induc-
tion the nature of a cargo of wheat through judicious sampling;
this process determines for us, by empirical means, the ratio with
which certain characters occur. Presumptive reasonings on the other
hand (also called abduction, retroduction, hypothesis), consists in
inferring an explanation, cause, or hypothesis from some fact which
can be taken as a consequence of the hypothesis. Presumptive rea-
soning is therefore the provisional adoption of a hypothesis, because
every possible consequence of it is capable of verification, so that
by pursuing this method its disagreements with facts will be re-
vealed (1.68). The difference between induction and presumption
is that the former infers the existence of phenomena homogeneous
to those already observed, while in the latter something hetero-
geneous to that already observed is concluded, even something im-
possible for us to observe directly (2.640).

Now Peirce believes that these forms of inference are different
from explicative probable reasoning, which he also calls statistical
deduction. For the latter is probable, as we shall see more fully
below, in the sense that though in a particular case its conclusion is
false, yet in the long run and with a definite ratio, similar conclu-
sions would be approximately true. But induction, for example, is
probable only in the sense that though it may give a false conclu-
sion, yet in the long run where the process is used, a different but
approximately true conclusion would be drawn (2. 703). Thus, in
probable reasoning the predicted conclusion is verified in the long
run in a definite ratio of all the cases; in ampliative reasoning, the
predicted conclusion will be changed in a good proportion of the
cases, but will become approximately correct in the long run (2.709).

Charles Peirce^ s Guesses at the Riddle [ 79 ]

But it can be shown that the distinction between statistical deduc-
tion and the species of ampliative reasoning is only a psychological
one, and refers simply to the various degrees of completeness our
knowledge may possess. The distinction does not touch the logical
question as to the validity of these forms of inference. For consider:
If we reason at all, we must reason from premisses, and if we reason
validly we do so because the conclusion is obtained in accordance
with the leading principle or canon of the argument. When Perrce
asks how it is possible that a man can observe one fact and then pro-
nounce judgment concerning another fact not involved in the first,
and when he then adds that such reasoning has no definite probabil-
ity (2.690), he is surely inconsistent with his own analysis If the
inference is made in virtue of some leading prmciple, it does have
some degree of probability, namely, the relative truth-frequency
associated with that principle. If the “inference” does not involve a
leading principle, no reasoning takes place in any usual sense of the
word. Thus, I sample a bag of beans and find half the sample is
white. If I knovo nothing concerning the representative nature of
the sample, I can conclude nothing about the color of the beans in
the bag, although I may make a guess, consider my guess a hypothe-
sis, and then proceed to test the hypothesis in the usual way. But if
I do know that samples drawn in the way I drew this one are
representative of the beans in the bag, I can conclude something
about the constitution of the bag by statistical deduction; and the
argument is probable in the sense to be defined presently. Ampliative
inference is thus the experimental process by which we determine
approximately the numerical values of the relative truth-frequencies
involved. But as Peirce himself admits, its species are inverse forms
of deductive probable inference, and their validity (the only rele-
vant question in logic) is the validity of statistical deductions (2.511,
2.718).

We need discuss therefore only the theory of deductive probabil-
ity, which Peirce adopted from Venn and developed in an original
way.® The following are its essential features: (i) Probable infer-
ence, like all inference, depends for its validity upon determinate

8. A rigorously systematic discussion of the theory was never given by
Peirce. It has been left for German students (Von Mises, Reichenbach,
Tomier) to discover independently the fundamental prinaples of the truth-
frequency theory.

[ 3o ] Sovereign Reason

relations between propositions. (2) No proposition is probable in-
trinsically, but only with respect to other propositions which are
evidence for it. Probability is thus a relation between propositions.

(3) Whether a proposition has or has not a degree of probability
on definite evidence, does not depend on the state of mind of the
person entertaining the proposition. Psychology is as little (or as
much) relevant in probable inference as it is in necessary inference.

(4) An inference is probable in so far as it belongs to a class of in-
ferences in which the frequency of the conclusions being true is a
determinate ratio of the frequency of the premisses being true. Prob-
ability is the limiting value of the fraction whose numerator is the
number of times both antecedent and consequent are true and whose
denominator is the number of times the antecedent is true, as the
number increases vmthout limit. Hence probability is not, as on
Keynes’ view, an unanalyzable concept. (5) The same proposition
may have different degrees of probability in accordance with the
sort of evidence which is marshalled in its support. But the rele-
vance of the evidence can not be determined on formal grounds
alone.

It is clear that since probability is the limit of an endless series,
we can never assert categorically the value of a probability. Hence
the assertion that such and such is the probability of a proposition
is always a hypothesis^ always subject to correction And hence, also,
the sole business of the experimental sciences, since we can not ex-
haustively study all of nature, is to carry on sampling operations
which will indicate approximately the values of different proba-
bilities.

The question remains, therefore, under what conditions the proc-
ess of sampling will lead us to an approximately true knowledge of
the constitution of a field. Peirce prepares his reader by first re-
jecting in toto all theories of probability which are based upon the
principle of equal distribution of ignorance; second (this is a corol-
lary from the first) rejecting the use of inverse probabilities; and
third, denying that the validity of sampling depends on any mate-
rial assumptions such as the uniformity of nature (2.102, 2.749).
According to him, sampling is a valid process whatever be the con-
stitution of the universe, since its validity follows from the manner
in which the sampling is conducted. And the following are the
conditions under which sampling is a reliable process; first, the sub-

Charles Peirce^s Guesses at the Riddle [ 8i ]

ject-matter must have a determinate nature; second, the sampling
should be carried out without bias, the samples must be “fair”; and
third, the characters whose distribution is investigated must be pre-
designated or predicted prior to drawing a sample, if that sample is
to serve as evidence for any hypothesis concerning the constitution
of the field. And Peirce concludes that while in any given case the
process may lead to false results, it will, if pursued far enough, ap-
proximate more and more closely to the truth.

Now it is true that the method of sampling Peirce discusses is,
in general outlines, the one pursued in the sciences. But isn’t Peirce
claiming more for the method than is warranted^ Thus, the asser-
tion that if samples are drawn “fairly,” i.e , without bias, they will
ultimately yield a “fair,” i.e., representative, sample of the consti-
tution of a field, is either a bald tautology, or is a Tnaterkl assump-
tion to the effect that the specific mode of sampling is carried on in
such a way that every variation in the field will turn up in our
samples at some time or other. But if the amount of independent
variety in the field should be indefinitely large (or even too large to
handle with the methods at our disposal) we may never obtain
representative samples no matter how, or how far, we carry on the
process. Some material assumption, e.g., the existence of a limit in
a rapidly converging series of variations, or the existence of a finite
number of types or classes in nature, seems to be required if the
process of “fair” sampling should yield representative ones. It is
true that such a material assumption is itself a hypothesis, and must
be evaluated in accordance with the usual canons. But this only goes
to show that we can get no absolute gucrrantee in advance that any
given method will work, no matter how trustworthy it may have
shown itself to be.

I also can not escape the impression that in spite of Peirce’s
vehement denial of the principle of antecedent equiprobabilities, it
returns to plague him. The process of sampling depends on the fact
that more samples of a certain kind appear than others. But why
do they? Because, the answer is, more samples of that kind occur m
the field studied. But since samples not yet drawn exist only
potentially in the field, it is legitimate to ask why there should be
potentially more of one kind than of another. And the answer seems
to be that if all the relevant characters in the field were combined in
every permissible way, and if all these permissible combinations nvere

[ 82 ] Sovereign Reason

antecedently equally probable^ then there would be more of one kind
than of another.

Because of the sharp distinction Peirce makes between induction
and presumption, he tends to obscure the identity of the processes
employed, say, in evaluating the constitution of a cargo of wheat and
m determining the correctness of the theory of gravitation.^ This
has as a consequence an unnecessary restriction of the frequency
theory of probability, a restriction which is being removed by mod-
ern students. But already Royce showed that in evaluating a theory
we are taking samples from all its logical consequences. There is
therefore no good reason to doubt the universal applicability of the
frequency theory of probability and the essential identity of scien-
tific method in all departments of science.

4 *

The editors of this edition deserve the congratulations of all stu-
dents for their self-effacing and intelligent labor in bringing a sem-
blance of order into a wilderness of manuscript. They have almost
achieved what Peirce thought impossible for mortal man to do. Each
volume has been supplied with very full indices, and in several cases
with helpful explanatory notes. In the light of the enormity of the
task and the excellence of the achievement, it may seem ungracious
to find fault. But I think it is unfortunate that Peirce’s larger
manuscripts have been broken up and distributed throughout the
volumes; this is especially true for the completed Grand Logic, the
several chapters of the Minute Logic, and the Lowell Lectures, One
may also question the judgment of the editors in neglecting to in-
clude in these early volumes certain outstanding papers to illustrate
Peirce’s doctrines: e.g., his review of Frazer’s Berkeley for his views
on nominalism, or his essay on the ^'Fixation of Belief” for his doc-
trine of fallibilism. Because of the topical arrangement of the papers,
the historically interested reader will be able to estimate the extent
to which Peirce’s ideas underwent change only by a painful leafing
of each volume. It is hoped the editors will manage to include a
table in the final volume indicating where the component parts of

9, He declares he had committed a fundamental error in his Johns Hopkins
essay on *TrobabIe Inference,” but he does not state explicitly what the error
is (2.102).

Charles Peirce^s Guesses at the Biddle [ 83 ]

the larger manuscripts are to be found, and possibly also the
chronological sequence of the papers.

5 -

The original speculative power and acuteness of Peirce's mind
appear at their very best in the present two installments of the
Collected Papers.'^^ But space prohibits anything other than a brief
indication of some of their striking contents.

Volume III consists entirely of previously published papers on
what goes by the ill-fitting name of mathematical logic, and includes
his great series of papers on the logic of relatives. Readmg them
consecutively one is impressed how steeped Peirce was in the mathe-
matical researches of his day, and how the inquiries into the nature
of generalized algebras by men like his father and Sylvester molded
the course of his own thinking. There can be little question that
Whitehead’s Universal Algebra represents the culmination of some
of Peirce’s attempts in that direction. Many of the papers are now
primarily of historical interest; and looking back upon them from
the vantage ground of the elegant discussions in the Principia, they
seem needlessly difficult simply because of the clumsy symbolism
Peirce employed. And yet, in spite of the frequent incoherence of
his statements, it is an inspiring experience to see him grappling
heroically with novel ideas, conquering one only to attack another.
These papers reveal that while Peirce strove mightily to achieve
a philosophic system, he was essentially a man of great visions, but
incapable temperamentally of organizing his ideas into unity and
coherence. It goes without saying that he anticipated much that
was independently discovered by others subsequently, e.g., the
logistic thesis concerning the nature of mathematics, or the essen-
tial features of Poincare’s theory of applied geometry as a ^"con-
vention.” In addition, material more or less adequately treated in
the preceding volumes of this edition, is restated and often ampli-
fied in both of the present volumes, so that a somewhat clearer light
is thrown on such things as ""fallibilism” in mathematics and the
theory of signs. His comments on a variant of logical atomism are

10. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Edited by Charles Hart-
shome and Paul Weiss. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1933. Vol. Ill,
Exact Logic. Pp. xiv-f 433. $5.00. Vol. IV, The Simplest Mathematics. Pp* x
-j- 601. $6x)0.

[ 84 ] Sovereign Reason

eminently worth reading, especially today. His defense of “in-
finitesimals” is provoking to say the least, even if not clear or con-
vincing, and even if it seems to miss the point as to why the idea has
been abandoned.

Volume IV consists chiefly of hitherto unpublished material on
the foundation of logic and mathematics. Peirce anticipated the
ideas expressed in Sheffer’s stroke function, and the ideas as well
as the use of the currently prominent matrix method. He made
very full studies of the cardinality of classes, of the well-known con-
tradiction, of orders of infimty, of linear algebras as instances of
the general theory of relations; and his demonstrations have inter-
esting, though sometimes uncritical, variations of the classic proofs.
His judgment on the metaphysical importance of some of these
studies seem now curiously unbalanced, e.g., the significance of the
projective theory of distance; although anyone who has been exalted
by that subject will surely forgive even an extended period of in-
tellectual insobriety. His discussion of the logical priority of ordinal
to cardinal number is particularly good and valuable, and ties up
directly with the current Grundlagenstreit in mathematics. Also,
little sermons on the value of logic, on how to read most profitably,
on free will, on the issues of nominalism, and on the historical
parallels between styles in architecture and types of logical theory,
are to be found hidden away amidst technical discussions.

Peirce paid much attention to logical diagrams as instruments for
the analysis of logical form, rather than as engines for calculation.
And he regarded his Existential Graphs, a systematic scheme for
representing geometrically any proposition however complex, as
his chef d^oeuvre, A full account of it is included in Volume IV.
But while the method is ingenious, and in many respects an im-
provement on the Euler and Venn diagrams, it is very clumsy; and
it is difficult to attach to it the great importance which Peirce did.
But perhaps the bearing of Existential Graphs upon Peirce’s prag-
maticism will become evident in later volumes.

All in all, Peirce’s technical mastery of detail and his grasp of
metaphysical issues as revealed in specific subject-matter are most
impressively exhibited in this latest volume of the edition. It does
not offer solutions to many pressing questions; it does not even ask
some that one would like to ask. But it is a mine of suggestions to
him who has the wit and patience to ferret them out.

Charles Peirce^s Guesses at the Riddle

[85]

6 .

Of the volumes of the Collected Papers which have appeared thus
far, the present one^^ is undoubtedly the richest in historical impor-
tance, in diversity of material, and in veins of thought which still
remain to be mined. It contains the long awaited Pragmatism
Lectures, and presents in available form Peirce’s weightiest papers
on general philosophy—those published in the Journal of Speculative
Philosophy, I know of no better way to reach the heart of Peirce’s
doctrines than to read the important essays published in Book II
of the present volume. The papers in Book III discuss Peirce’s
relations to the philosophy of common sense, and contain many of
his own views under the label of critical common-sensism.

The Pragmatism Lectures repeat with simplifications and some
elaborations doctrines already familiar from the first two volumes
of the present edition: the phenomenology of the universal cate-
gories, the theory of signs, and the analysis of reasoning into its
three main types. Peirce’s strong idealistic leanings become very
apparent here as elsewhere; and his views on reflective thought as
an instrument for establishing general modes of behavior (thus sub-
ordinating logic to ethics), are brought out clearly. But on the
whole the Lectures are disappointing: they are repetitious, they lack
integration, and they contain many irrelevant though often inter-
esting by-paths.

With the possible exception of the technical papers on strict
logic, Peirce’s writings on the theory of meaning seem to me to con-
tain his most substantial contribution to philosophy. According to
him, pragmatism maintains that nothing is in the understanding
unless it is first in the senses, that nevertheless perceptual judgments
always contain an element of generality or hypothesis, and that
therefore such judgments are simply limiting cases of abductive rea-
soning and so always subject to correction. Ideas are to be clarified
in terms of overt, public behavior of things, not in terms of private
data of sense or self-luminous abstracta. In this insistance upon
the intimate connection between sense and reason as well as upon
the denotative reference of all intellectual conceptions, lie the

II. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Edited by Charles Hart-
shorne and Paul Weiss. Volume V, Pragmatism and Pragmaticism. Cambridge;
Harvard University Press. 1934. Pp, rii + 455. $5^00,

[ 86 ] Sovereign Reason

strength and the difficulty of the pragmatic account of meaning. It
eschews claims to infallible cognitive powers and yet avoids a stulti-
fying scepticism. It must be admitted that the ambiguities which
appear in Peirce’s hitherto published writings on the theory of
meaning are not ironed out in the papers now published for the first
time. And yet if Peirce had been taken as the standard expositor
of pragmatism, the often dreary and fruitless polemics on the nature
of truth during the first two decades of the present century would
have been avoided, with undoubted profit to the clarification of
ideas in various departments of thought. For by pragmatism Peirce
understood a method of making ideas clear, a branch of logic and
scientific method, not a cosmology or a metaphysic. That is why,
in spite of his penchant for a form of speculative idealism, he will
remain a stimulus and a guide to all students of philosophy whose
passion is to understand rather than to legislate.

Kant’s influence upon contemporary positivism is a byword. It
is interesting nevertheless to read Peirce’s account of the indebted-
ness of his ‘"proto-positivism” to the eighteenth-century thinker, and
students of the history of ideas will find much in the present volume
to repay their reading of it.

7 -

Students of Peirce’s writings who hope to find in the present
volume^^ a carefully worked out metaphysics will be disappointed
by its contents. Most of the papers included in it appeared in Peirce’s
life-time, and while some of the hitherto unpublished material helps
fill out lacunae, on the whole there is little in the volume which was
not known before. Like the preceding volumes in this edition the
present one is a curious mixture of grandiose cosmological specula-
tion and penetrating analyses upon a variety of topics.

The volume begins bravely enough with a program for meta-
physics of studying the most general features of reality. Peirce
claims that the objects of metaphysical inquiry are open to observa-
tion in the same sense that the objects of science are, and he at-
tributes the backward condition of metaphysics to the fact that its
leading professors have been theologians. It is perhaps this pro-

12. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Edited by Charles Hart-
shome and Paul Weiss. Vol. VI, Scientific Metaphysics. Cambridge. Harvard
University Press, 1935. Pp. x + 462. $5.00,

Charles Peirce's Guesses at the Riddle [ 87 ]

gram and this claim that led the editors to choose the title of ‘'Sci-
entific Metaphysics” for the volume. However, while Peirce has
many important things to say about the generic features of reality
in his discussion of the categories, it is a Schellingian outlook which
characterizes most of the volume. Peirce declares that “metaphysics
has to account for the whole universe of being. It has, therefore,
to do something like supposing a state of things in which that
universe did not exist, and consider how it could have arisen.”
There follows the familiar tychistic-agapastic-synechism. Since
Peirce believes that it is regularity which requires explanation, he
tries to exhibit it as the product of evolution from the chance ele-
ments in the universe. His conclusion is that the only intelligible
theory of nature is a form of objective ideahsm, according to which
matter is effete mind, the habits of the latter becoming physical laws.
An interesting feature in this cosmogeny is that not only the actual
universe but also the Platonic realm of forms is evolutionary in
origin.

The best things in the volume, to my mind, are the specific analy-
ses Peirce makes of such ideas as necessity, chance, space, time,
infinity, and continuity, and the additional light that is thrown on
his views on probability and the nature of science. In his discus-
sion of continuity, Peirce occasionally approaches the standpoint
of contemporary intuitionism, although he does not work out the
implications of his views. However, even in his analyses Peirce is
dominated by his evolutionary cosmology, not always in the interest
of clarity or cogency. Thus, while Peirce did yeoman service in
pointing out the contingent factors in the laws of science, he seems
to me to obscure the issues when he transforms “chance” into a
substantial agent And while his attack on necessitarianism is im-
pressive, I do not find that he offers any respectable evidence for
his view that the “order of nature” is changing, or that these
changes are brought about through the operation of a primordial
“mind.” Again, his ideas on space and time, when I can under-
stand them, seem to me very naive; and his conclusion that legal
corporations have a “real” personality illustrates the tricks that
words will play upon minds that should know better.

It is to be hoped that the remaining volumes of the Collected
Papers will be published in short order. But enough of Peirce's
work has now appeared to suggest the conclusion that a consistent

[ 88 ] Sovereign Reason

system of ideas can not be forced upon him. He said different and
incompatible things at different times, and there seems no way of
reconciling his period of forthright naturalism with the anthropo-
morphic idealism of other portions of his writings. Peirce character-
ized himself justly when he declared he was a “mere table of con-
tents, so abstract, a very snarl of twine.”

5

Charles S. Peirce, Pioneer
of Modern Empiricism

]S[o ACCOUNT of the development of contemporary empiricim is
adequate which neglects the writings and the influence of Charles
Peirce. Although he is not easily pigeon-holed and can not be
claimed as the exclusive property of any school or movement, it is
appropriate that the hundredth anniversary of his birth should be
commemorated at this Congress. For the movement of which it is
a manifestation is engaged in a cooperative, intensive cultivation
of the methods of the sciences with the help of the most advanced
tools of modem logic; and Peirce’s intellectual career was also a
single-minded devotion to that task. It is fitting, also, that his birth-
year be celebrated at Harvard by an international congress. For
although he was denied the privilege of teaching at this university,
much of his influence was propagated by William James and
Josiah Royce, two of its great teachers; and however much he may
have suffered from neglect during his life-time, his work surely

[89]

{ 90 ] Sovereign Reason

merits recognition from a movement not confined by national
bounds. It is characteristic of the best established sciences that
though individuals may pursue researches m them independently
of one another, the conclusions reached tend to support each other
and to converge toward a common stream of sound beliefs; and
such convergence is indeed the sole identifiable warrant for the
confidence that some measure of the truth has been attained. It is
therefore a happy sign that so many of the central ideas of the
present movement have been independently developed on both
sides of the Atlantic. One is not minimizing the contributions of
the Vienna Circle in pointing out that many of its recent views
have been taken for granted for some time by American colleagues,
largely because the latter have come to intellectual maturity under
the influence of Peirce.

It may nonetheless impress some as a paradox to count Peirce
among the formative influences upon participants of this Congress.
If, as Professor Frank recently stated, Mach is one of the spiritual
ancestors of the unity of science movement and “the real master
of the Vienna Circle,” the Peirce who tried to construct a meta-
physical system in the grand manner, and to provide a framework
adequate for the results of the special sciences for a long time to
come, seems definitely out of place in this company. He carried
on a life-long polemic against positivisms of the type of Comte and
Pearson; and though he had a high regard for some of the work of
Mach, he expressed in no uncertain terms his condemnation of
what he regarded as Mach’s sensationalistic, nominalistic empiri-
cism.^ He confessed that he owed much to Schelling, and his archi-
tectonic cosmogony is admittedly a species of absolute idealism. He
was a diligent student of the history of philosophy, he was brought
up on Kant and claimed that at one time he knew the first Critique
by heart, and he had a profound admiration for the scholastics.

But although Peirce had an abiding passion for system-building,
his most vigorous efforts did not go into speculative metaphysics;
and in any case the influence of his metaphysical writings has been
practically nil— whether because only inadequate outlines of his
grandiose system appeared during his life-time, or because other
tendencies which Peirce initiated swamped the effects they may have

I. Cf. Peirce’s review of Mach’s “The Science of Mechanics,” in The Nation^
VoL 57, 1893.

Charles S. Peirce y Pioneer [ 91 ]

had otherwise. Indeed, seldom have severer judgments upon the
claims and methods of traditional metaphysics been made than those
to be found in his writings. He regarded the intrusion of metaphys-
ical speculation into science as a hindrance to free inquiry, and
distrusted an enterprise which has failed to develop methods of
cooperative research among ns members. His sharp criticism of
Mach, though in my opinion unjust and not free from misunder-
standing, were directed against what he took to be an attempt to
legislate on metaphysical grounds the objects of knowledge, the
limits of science, and the possible forms of physical theory.^ But
however this may be, it would be a gross misrepresentation of
Peirce’s views to regard them as minor variants of traditional philo-
sophic doctrines. Peirce is the nearest thmg to Leibniz this coun-
try has produced, and like the latter was able to combine a specula-
tive bent of a high order of talent and ingenuity with a power of
sober analysis and sense for concrete fact. His importance in the
history of recent thought is due to his contributions to logic and
mathematics, and to the stimulating effect of his first-hand knowl-
edge of the theoretical and experimental sciences upon the study
of scientific methods.

“From the moment when I could think at all,” he wrote in 1897, “^ritil

2. Thus he declared in the above review. “Sir Isaac Newton formulated
the three laws of motion which stand today in all the text books The first,
due to Galileo, is that a body left to itself continues for ever to describe
equal spaces in equal times on one straight line. The third, Newton^s own
achievement in great measure, the law of acaon and reaction, is that one body
cannot be drawn back without other bodies on the same line being drawn
forward to balance it. Now Newton, with his incomparable clearness of
apprehension, saw that the third law imphes that spacial displacement is not
merely relative, and further that, this being granted, the first law implies that
temporal durauon is not merely relative. Hence Newton drew the conclu-
sion that there were such realities as Time and Space, and that they were
something more than words expressive of relations between bodies and events
This was a scientific conclusion, based upon sound probable reasomng from
established facts. It was fortified by Foucault’s pendulum experiment, which
showed that the earth has an absolute motion of rotauon equal to its motion
relative to the fixed stars. Moreover, Gauss and others were led to ask whether
It be precisely true that the three angles of a triangle sum up to two right
angles, and to say that observation alone can decide this question. . . . But
Mach will not let it go so. His metaphysics tells him that there is no such
thing as absolute space and time, and consequently no such thing as abso-
lute motion. The laws of monon must be revised in such a way that they
shall not predict that result of Foucault’s experiment which they diid success-
fully predict, and that non-Euciidean geometry must be put aside on meta-
physical grounds. Is not this making fact bend to theory?” Op. at., p. 252.

[ 9^ ] Sovereign Reason

now, about forty years, I have been diligently and incessantly occupied
with the study of methods of inquiry, both those which have been and
are pursued and those which ought to be pursued. For ten years before
this study began, I had been in training in the chemical laboratory. I
was thoroughly grounded not only in aU that was then known of physics
and chemistry, but also in the way in which those who were successfully
advancing knowledge proceeded. I have paid the most attention to the
methods of the most exact sciences, have intimately communed with
some of the greatest minds of our times in physical science, and have
myself made positive contributions—none of them of any very great im-
portance, perhaps— in mathematics, gravitation, optics, chemistry, astron-
omy, etc. I am saturated, through and through, with the spirit of the
physical sciences.”^

It is unnecessary on this occasion to speak of Peirce’s contribu-
tions to formal logic (e.g., his improvements upon Boole’s work,
his development of the logic of relations, etc.), for these have been
recognized long ago; and it is a safe conjecture that his technical
papers on these subjects are now primarily of historical interest. It
is worth pointing out, nevertheless, that for Peirce formal logic
was simply one division of the general theory of signs. An adequate
logical theory, according to him, must take into account the com-
plicated properties and functions of signs in inquiry, and even the
rules of formal logic were regarded by him as intimately related
to the habits of action generated in the course of successful inquiry.
Thus, the alleged facts of ‘‘consciousness” were dismissed by him
as totally irrelevent to the question of the validity of the laws of
logic; for even if consciousness were annulled it would still remain
true, he said, “that such and such a habit of determining one virtual
store of knowledge by another will result in the concentration of
action so as to bring about definite ends”— to which he added that
rationality consists in the fact that the rational being will act so
as to attain certain ends.^ Accordingly, Peirce was one of the most
pronounced foes of attempts to base logic upon inner feelings of
certitude or other facts of individual psychology, and his concep-
tion of the nature and function of formal logic is incompatible
with interpretations of inquiry in terms of a “mentalistic” theory
of thinking.

Peirce’s distinctive contributions to logic as the general theory

3. Charles S, Peirce, Cpllected Papers^ 1.3. AU references, unless otherwise
specified, are to volume and paragraph of Ais edition of Peirce’s writings.

4. 2.66.

Charles 5 . Peirce, Pioneer [ 93 ]

of signs center around his pragmatism, his critical common-sensism,
and his fallibilism. By far the best known is his pragmatic maxim,
proposed as a method for clarifying ideas, eliminating specious
problems, and unmasking mystification and obscurantism hiding
under the cloak of apparent profundity.® In one form or another
his proposal was adopted by a number of distinguished thinkers,
for example, in this country by William James and John Dewey,
so that today it is almost a commonplace. Peirce’s own formulation
of the pragmatic maxim leaves much to be desired in the way of
explicitness and clarity; and more recent formulations, such as
those by Professor Carnap and others, have the same general intent
but superior precision. I nevertheless venture two general remarks
on the Peircean version of pragmatism which, though obvious,
merit attention.

The pragmatic maxim was intended as a guiding principle of
analysis. It was offered to philosophers in order to bring to an end
disputes which no observation of facts could settle because they
involved terms with no definite meaning. It was directed at the
Cartesian doctrine of clear and distinct ideas, which found the
terminus of analysis in vague abstractions claimed to be grasped
intuitively, as well as at the common tendency to convert types
of behaviors into unknowable agencies controlling the flux of
events. Above all, it pointed to the fact that the “meanings” of
terms and statements relevant in inquiry consist in their being used
in determinate and overt ways. Pragmatism, to employ Peircean lan-
guage, was thus a proposal to understand general terms in terms of
their concrete application, rather than vice versa. “We should hardly
find today a man of Kirchhoff’s rank in science,” he wrote in 1903,
“saying that we know exactly what energy does but what energy
is we do not know in the least. For the answer would be that
energy being a term in a dynamical equation, if we know how to
apply that equation, we know thereby what energy is. . . Now

5. His earliest version of it runs as follows. “Consider what effects, that
might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our con-
ception to have. Then, our concepuon of these effects is the whole of our
conception of the object.” 5402. ^

6. 5.207. Twenty-five years earlier Peirce wrote: “In how many profound
treatises is not force spoken of as a ‘mysterious entity/ which seems to be
only a way of confessing that the author despairs of ever getting a clear notion
of what the word means! In a recent admired work on AndyUcal Mechanics
it is stated that we understand precisely the effect of force, but what force

[ 94 ] Sovereign Reason

my first point is that the pragmatic maxim should be construed as
an invitation to analyze specific concepts m a definite way. This
“definite way’’ places emphasis upon the contexts in which terms
occur and upon the complex of relevant practices involved in their
use. Pragmatism does not supply a formula which states once for
all what the meaning of a statement is; for when its maxim is taken
seriously, it excludes the assumption that the meaning of a sentence
can be determined in isolation from the system of sentences in
which it occurs, the rules governing its acceptance, and the kind of
behavior associated with it. It is unfortunate that so much energy
has gone into controversy about the wholesale meaning of “mean-
ing,” as if any formula could state with adequacy the multifarious
ways in which that word is used, instead of being turned into
analyses of the specific uses of terms in diflFerent contexts. Would
it not be well to shelve the term “meaning” in philosophic discus-
sion and talk instead of the way in which terms are used'^ Prag-
matism does not constitute another ambitious “prolegomena for
every future inquiry,” and it would be a pity if, mistaken for such
rather than taken as a fruitful leading principle of inquiry, it would
meet the fate of the Cartesian, Lockian, and Kantian systems. Peirce
himself instituted the sort of analysis of several specific concepts
called for by his maxim, and Mach’s work is still valuable primarily,
it seems to me, because of the splendid examples of such analysis
it carried through.

I have already skirted my second point. Peirce’s version of prag-
matism locates the intellectual purport of conceptions not in indi-
vidual sensations or perceptions, but in the concrete habits or ten-
dencies to action to which their acceptance leads. “The whole
function of thought,” he maintained, “is to produce habits of
action; and that whatever there is connected with a thought, but
irrelevant to its purpose, is an accretion to it but no part of it. If
there be a unity among our sensations which has no reference to
how we shall act on a given occasion, as when we listen to a piece
of music, why we do not call that thinking. To develop its mean-

itself is we do not understand! This is simply a self-contradiction. The idea
which the word force excites in our minds has no other function than to
affect our actions, and these actions can have no reference to force otherwise
than through its effects. Consequently, if we know what the effects of force
are, we are acquainted with every fact which is implied in saying that a
force exists, and there is nothing more to know” 5404.

Charles S. Peirce^ Pioneer [ 95 ]

ing, we have, therefore, simply to determine what habits it pro-
duces, for what a thing means is simply the habits it involves. Now,
the identity of a habit depends on how it might lead us to act, not
merely under such circumstances as are likely to arise, but under
such as might possibly occur, no matter how improbable they may
be. What the habit is depends on nvhen and how it causes us to
act.”’’

It is clear that this pronouncement is at least verbally different
from the current version of the verifiability principle, according to
which empirical propositions must be reducible to observation
statements containing various sorts of observation predicates. With-
out intending to minimize the remarkable clarification which such
a formulation has introduced or to question its superiority in point
of precision over that given by Peirce, it seems to me, nevertheless,
that an adequate empiricism can not afford to neglect Peirce’s
emphasis upon habits of action or to concentrate entirely upon the
reduction of one set of statements to others. For in the first place,
this emphasis makes evident the continuity of knowledge-getting
with other organic activities. It involves the conception of inquiry
as occurring in a definite context, instituted to settle specific doubts
and problems, and terminating in an equally definite way with the
establishment of smoothly-working habits of action which have
mastered the difficulties for which die inquiry was initiated. Knowl-
edge thus becomes identifiable as the product of overt behavior
involving cooperative effort in a community of inquirers, rather
than as the outcome of a purely subcutaneous mental activity. So
conceived, knowledge is in fact frequently obtained, for the claim
to possess it does not involve the preposterous requirement that the
outcome of one inquiry be incorrigible by further inquiry, or that
unless it carries the traits of absolute finality and all-inclusiveness
the product of research is not knowledge. Peirce thus laid the
foundation for a theory of inquiry which eschewed a mentalistic,
introspective psychology, and he espoused a molar behaviorism at
a time when it was regarded as fanciful speculation.

In the second place, Peirce’s emphasis is fatal to the conception
that science must be grounded upon an indubitable apprehension of
simple elements, whether these be atomic-facts, sense-data, or
essences, all pre-manufactured and neady packaged; for it entails

7. 5400.

[ 96 ] Sovereign Reason

the view that alleged “simples” must be contextually interpreted
and that they are products of inquiry which has learned to isolate
certain features of the environment as reliable clues to what is going
on. It points to the fact that the adequate use of even the simplest
observational terms of whatever type involves habits of manipulat-
ing objects in the environment, and that the established sense of
even the most abstract terms of science involves reference at some
point to gross, overt activities. Surely, no one would take seriously
the professed acceptance of the physicalistic thesis of the reduci-
bility of all terms to those occurring in every-day observation, if
that acceptance did not go hand in hand with appropriate types of
gross behavior associated with such observation terms. And the
contemporary insistence upon methodological principles as reso-
lutions and rules of language, fails in its objective to exhibit the
logical articulation of science if it neglects the practical compulsions
involved in the construction and manipulation of technological and
laboratory apparatus.

At the risk of treading upon ground on which angels fear to
step, I should also like to mention the elementary point that in terms
of Peirce’s emphasis neither terms nor statements can be regarded
as designating, independently of the habits involved in their use.
Consequently, “the meaning” of expressions is not to be sought in
self-subsisting “facts,” “essences,” or other “designata,” but must
be construed in terms of the procedures associated with them in
specific contexts. Some have suspected, perhaps unjustly, that the
recently inaugurated discipline of semantics will open wide the
door for the rehabilitation of Bolzano’s Saetze-an^-Sich, Meinong’s
objectives, Russell’s subsistents, and allied conceptions of the refer-
ends of signs. Though such doctrines have had fruitful historical
roles, I think it would be a retrograde step if modern logical empiri-
cism were to revive them in a new form; for the great strength and
promise of the movement has been its interpretation of the abstract
in terras of the concrete, and its resolute turning from speculations
which have no ascertainable consequences in issues of observable
fact. I can think of no better way to still these suspicions than by
placing the study of semantics into a behavioral context, and by
instituting an analysis of such key semantic terms as “designation”
and “truth” as used in specific contexts, in order to reveal the modes
of action they signify.

Charles S. Peirce, Pioneer [ 97 ]

Peirce’s critical commoa-sensism is integral to the pragmatic at-
titude as developed in the present paper. Though indebted to the
Scotch common-sense realists for some of his ideas and language,
Peirce had nothing in common with their dogmatic faith in self-
evident truths or their attempets to estabhsh a bedrock foundation
for current theologies and social theories. His critical common-
sensism was an elaboration of his fundamental insight that in any
inquiry we must plunge into medias res with all the beliefs and
prejudices we actually have, and that we can not, even in principle,
engage in a universal Cartesian scepticism. Every inquiry uses and
takes for granted many habitual modes of action as well as specific
assumptions about the course of events, which in that inquiry func-
tion as indubitables; and many of these assumptions, largely because
they are vague, have withstood the test of repeated experience, so
that it would be idle to doubt them. The adequacy of specific be-
liefs and habits is constantly put into question; but there can be
no intelligible scepticism concerning our crude experience as a
whole, since the formulation of every specific doubt requires dis-
tinctions themselves significant only in terms of the procedures of
the common-day world. It is not possible, therefore, to dispense
with the vague indubitables of every-day experience. Habitual be-
havior can not be “justified” by any theory of logic or of the
universe, and it can not be “clarified” by trying to exhibit it as a
complex of psychological or ontological simples, since every attempt
to do so must be brought to the test in the work-a-day world of
gross, vague distinctions. The justification and clarification can be
brought about only by showing what the consequences of such
behavior are, and that it is adequate to the situation at hand— it
being noted that the consideration of consequences and adequacy
leads finally to the same sort of gross behavior which furnished the
occasion for doubt.

Peirce claimed no infallibility for the beliefs of every-day ex-
perience, and indeed one of the cardinal tenets of his thought was
a universal fallibilism. Peirce’s fallibilism is a consequence of his
regarding the method of science as the most successful yet devised
for achieving stable beliefs and reliable conclusions; it has nothing
to do with the malicious scepticism which rejects science on the
ground that its conclusions are after all not established as being be-
yond the possibility of error, only to invoke a special set of impera-

[ 98 ] Sovereign Reason

tives as indubitable objects of human endeavor. Peirce noted that the
conclusion of no scientific inquiry is exempt from revision and cor-
rection, that scientists feel surer of their general logic of procedure
than of any particular conclusions reached by it, and that the method
of science is self-corrective, both as to its own specific features and
the specific conclusions gained with it. These insights dovetail
neatly with what has already been said concerning the importance
of construing concepts and statements in terms of the procedures
associated with them; for it is a simple corollary from this that the
conclusions of science must also be understood in terms of the
methods used to establish them, so that the reliability of the con-
clusions must be a function, first and last, of the character of the
methods. That is why Peirce found unacceptable theories of atomic
facts and sensory simples as indubitable objects of knowledge,
or the pretensions of philosophers to map the limits and possible
objects of science— for each of these illustrates a dogmatism
which blocks the road to inquiry, and to block this road was
for Peirce the least forgivable and most dangerous intellectual
vice.

Peirce was one of the earliest proponents of the frequency inter-
pretation of probability statements, and though contemporary for-
mulations of that view are superior to his, what he has to say on
the general theme may still be read with profit. As is well known,
there is still disagreement among competent students as to the scope
of the frequency theory of probability and its relation to the pro-
cedures of induction. Peirce’s views on this point, though not free
from difficulties, suggest promising lines of inquiry.

“The true guarantee of the validity of induction,” he declared, “is that
it is a method of reaching conclusions which, if it be persisted in long
enough, will assuredly correct any error concerning future experience
into which it may temporarily lead us. . . . It may be conceived, and
often is conceived, that induction leads a probability to its conclusion.
Now that is not the way induction leads to the truth. It lends no definite
probability to its conclusion. It is nonsense to talk of the probability of
a law, as if we could pick umverses out of a grab-bag and find in what
proportion of them the law held good. . . . The justification for believing
that an experimental theory which has been subjected to a number of
experimental tests will be in the near future sustained as well by further
such tests as it has hitherto been, is that by steadily pursuing that method
we must in the long run find out how the matter really stands. The rea-
son that we must do so is that our theory, if it be admissible even as a

Charles S. Peirce^ Pioneer [ 99 ]

theory, simply consists in supposing that such experiments will in the
long run have results of a certain character.”®

Peirce’s writings on induction are not uniformly clear, but in the
main they are consistent with his insistence upon the character of
the method used to test them as providing the only identifiable
ground for regarding the theories of science as reliable.

Toward the end of his life Peirce enumerated a number of tenets
which he regarded as fundamental to his version of pragmatism, and
which set him off from other thinkers. The list included the fol-
lowing: the denial of necessitarianism; the rejection of any “con-
sciousness” different from a visceral or other external sensation;
the acceptance of the notion of infinity as significant; the acknowl-
edgment that there are real habits which would produce effects
under circumstances that may not happen to get actualized; and
the insistence upon interpreting all hypostatic abstraction in terms
of what they would or might come to in the concrete.^ It is danger-
ous, I know, to try to fore# a fluid and developing movement into
the framework of a set of rubrics devised for another purpose;
nevertheless, it seems to me that on these points contemporary logi-
cal empiricism differs from Peirce only in relative emphasis and
mode of presentation, and stands closer to him than did most of his
own contemporaries. It is not improper, therefore, to claim him as a
spiritual ancestor of the movement which this congress represents,
and as an important formative influence upon the development of
at least its American participants.

Peirce once evaluated his own work as follows: “Just as there
are many fogies—old and young— who with idle conservatism dis-
pute the value of my work, so, unless the whole congregation of
logicians experiences a regeneration, I expect the day will come
when another generation of old and young fogies wiE be equaUy
indisposed to admit that there is any comer of the whole field that
I have not turned up, and put into the right condition.”^® The
density of old and young fogies among logical empiricists is I think
vanishingly smaU, and there is probably no one among its members
and sympathizers who would accept Peirce in toto^ or who would
not acknowledge him to have been mistaken on a number of funda-

8. 2.769, 2.78b, 5.170,

9. 6485.

10. 6.319.

[ jQQ ] Sovereign Reason

mental points, such as his naive conceptions of absolute space, his
curious apriori deduction of the types of actual physical forces, or
his failure to note the regulative and definitory function of a num-
ber of scientific principles. We can nevertheless honor him with
clear conscience for what he achieved of lasting value. Were he
still among us he would surely have endorsed the happy marriage
of the cultivation of logic and the empirical temper which dis-
tinguishes this movement, and he would have jomed hands with us
in furthering the quest for and the understanding of progressively
more adequate tools of inquiry.

6

Dewey's Theory
of Natural Science

I.

There is a curious and distressing paradox associated with the
growth of modem natural science. No one doubts that the expan-
sion of experimental techniques in conjunction with the develop-
ment of mathematically formulated theory has given us unprece-
dented intellectual and practical mastery over many sectors of
nature. Indeed, the maxim that knowledge is power, is widely ac-
knowledged as a tmth that has become an almost painfud platitude.
Nevertheless, scientific theory is frequently so construed that in-
stead of rendering the universe more intelligible and making men
feel more at home in it, both the constitution of nature and man’s
place in it have become more puzzling and mysterious.

Two interpretations of modem science have had an especially
wide currency. According to one, the discoveries of natural science,
especially of physics, make it impossible to suppose that the familiar

[lOl]

[ 102 ] Sovereign Reason

aspects of things encountered in every-day experience have a gen-
uine place in the objective order of nature, or that the quahties
manifested in our ordinary commerce with the world are anything
but illusory appearances. According to the other, the conceptions
of theoretical science are mere fictions, and at best only convenient
practical devices; they do not express the true characters of things,
and they are without relevance for matters of intimate human con-
cern. On either view, incoherent answers await questions concern-
ing the obvious efficacy of scientific knowledge in controlling the
course of familiar events, or concerning the relation of the human
scene to the rest of nature. On either view, fixed limits are imputed
to the scope of scientific method, and in consequence large areas
of human experience are held to be inherently incapable of fruitful
exploration by responsible scientific inquiry. In short, instead of
being recogmzed as an agent for liberating and redirecting human
energies, modem science is viewed in many quarters with anxious
dread or complacent indifference.

The factors responsible for this paradoxical state of affairs are
to be found partly in the historical circumstances under which mod-
ern science has developed, and partly in the inherent character of
modem natural science. Natural as well as social sciences have been
cultivated in an environment in which powerful vested interests have
been hostile to the pursuit of free inquiry. For many centuries, prev-
alent conceptions of social and political organization, no less than
entrenched beliefs on moral and religious subjects, have been
coupled with traditional assumptions concerning the mechanisms of
physical nature. Accordingly, the intellectual progress that suc-
cessfully challenged the latter also became a constant threat to
hallowed social ideals and deeply laid religious convictions. To be
sure, established churches and other institutions eventually learned
how to square their theological, social and moral creeds with the
latest findings of physical and even biological science. And what
more effective means for doing just this could have been devised
than that of so constming scientific findings that they are merely
convenient formulations of techniques of control, incapable of ever
rendering some assumed ‘‘inner nature” of things? Even so, a
strong emotional and overt resistance still persists to what is widely
felt to be the intrusion of scientific methods into the discussion of
human affairs.

Dewey's Theory of Natural Science [ 103 ]

But there are other reasons, more intrinsic to the nature of mod-
dem theoretical science, for the paradoxical philosophies that have
trailed its developments. Modem science is not primarily concerned
with the uses which things have in specifically human contexts, but
rather with the invariant conditions under which events occur and
with the mutual interrelations of things. In consequence, theoretical
physics operates with distinctions that are both highly abstract and
apparently incongruous with notions employed in habitual expe-
rience. In pomt of fact, the objects postulated in modern physics,
such as atoms and electrons, possess by their very definition few if
any of the qualities that identify and mark off the familiar things of
human life. For example, neither colors, nor sounds, nor odors, nor
even determinate positions and shapes are attributed to the funda-
mental particles of current sub-atomic theories. However, if physics
is assumed to disclose the ultimate and exclusive characters of things,
there is an obvious discrepancy between what the sciences appar-
ently teach and what is found in gross experience. How tempting
and seemingly cogent, therefore, is the explanation of this dis-
crepancy which views the distinctions and principles in terms of
which we order our daily lives as belonging merely to a realm of
subjective appearance!

This conclusion, moreover, is often supported by another line of
argument. The physics and physiology of perception show that
the qualities commonly attributed to things are in fact manifested
only under special conditions, among which must be counted the
presence of biological organisms. It seems plain, therefore, that the
directly apprehended quahties are not traits which things possess
absolutely and independently of their interaction with organic
bodies. And since such qualities do not belong to the “world of
physics,” it is concluded that they do not form part of the objective
order of nature. In brief, contrary to the naive realistic view, things
are not what they seem. On the other hand, every actual inquiry
into the causal patterns of nature takes its point of departure from
immediately experienced qualitative events, and it also terminates
in such an experience. For it is in the precarious existence of quali-
tative events that the sciences find their problems; and it is in the
agreement of their occurrence with assumed laws that evidence
for the latter is obtained. But if the qualities encountered in common
experience are held to belong exclusively to a realm of subjective

[ 104 ] Sovereign Reaso?i

appearance, while the mechanisms discovered by physics are taken
to constitute the tme reality, then science is indeed at war with
itself. As one typical contemporary reading of the import of natural
science states the general outcome, naive realism leads to physics,
but if physics is true then naive realism is false. On this analysis,
therefore, one is left with the choice of either accepting natural
science but rejecting as basically illusory the things that constitute
men’s most familiar and valued experiences, or accepting the ob-
jective character of the common-sense view of things but denying
the validity and relevance of modem science for matters of prime
human concern.

2 .

It is this alleged impasse of modem science, so paradoxical in its
formulation and so devastating in its practical consequences, which
has been at the focus of Dewey’s attention during his long philo-
sophical career. He has consistently maintained that this impasse is
generated by misconceptions concerning the relation of the objects
and distinctions of physical science to the things of ordinary ex-
perience. And he has in fact identified as one of the outstanding
issues of modem philosophy the clarification of just this problem.

Dewey has been intensely concerned with the problem, because
he recognized early in his career that mistaken notions about the
status of physical objects stand in the way of successfully exploiting
the potentialities of modem science for the enrichment of human
life. In particular, he has noted repeatedly and with untiring zeal
the fatal import of the traditional dualistic interpretation of science
for the other paramount issue of modern philosophy—the integration
of men’s beliefs about the world as derived from natural science,
with the principles in terms of which men direct and evaluate their
private and public conduct. An interpretation of the nature of sci-
entific objects which requires either the wholesale rejection of or-
dinary experience as illusory, or the condemnation of theoretical
science as mere convenient fiction, makes impertinent the findings
of natural science to the problems of human society. Such an inter-
pretation effectively deprives the tried logic of scientific method
of any authority in the treatment of morality, and kills in the bud
the promise implicit in the scientific enterprise of freeing men from
the bondage of frustrating custom.

Deavey^s Theory of Natural Science [ 105 ]

Dewey’s ultimate concern with the technical problems of the
theory of knowledge is thus moral in intent. However, he has not
been content with simply identifying the crucial issues of modem
philosophy; and he has never discussed them in merely moralistic
terms. A long lifetime of sustained eifort has gone into his attempt
to solve these problems, and to solve them in a technically compe-
tent manner. Hhs analysis of the status of scientific objects is indeed
not written for the man who reads as he runs, and is inextricably
linked with details in his often difficult account of the nature of
knowledge. Moreover, much of his discussion is carried on in the
midst of a far-flung polemic against what he believes are outmoded
views on the subject. For in his attempt to resolve the alleged im-
passe of modern science, an essential feature of Dewey’s strategy
consists in showing that the problem vanishes and becomes unintel-
ligible, when once the traditional preconceptions which generate
it are successfully challenged.

Dewey’s analysis of the relation of scientific objects to matters
of direct experience is rooted in one firm assumption which he
does not always make fully explicit. The premise from which he
operates is that distinctions must be understood in terms of the
concrete uses for which they are devised, and that in particular
scientific ideas must be construed in terms of their identifiable
functions in the context of inquiry. This assumption is unavoidable
in any responsible analysis, and is in any case decisive. Unless scien-
tific conceptions are construed in agreement with it, any proposed
interpretation of scientific discourse will be arbitrary; it will be
based on preconceptions derived from some tacit philosophical
commitments, rather than on the actual operative meaning of the
language of science.

It was Einstein who advised students of the methods of theo-
retical physics to concern themselves, not with accounts scientists
happen to give of what they do, but with their actual procedures
and achievements. Long before this advice was given, and long be-
fore it became fashionable to preach the virtues of functionalist or
contextualist analysis, Dewey was practicing it with energy and a
considerable measure of consistency. It is from this standpoint that
he has conducted intellectual war into the camps of traditional
philosophies of science; and by adopting that approach he has saved
himself from much futility and avoided some serious errors. It has

[ io6 ] Sovereign Reason

prevented him from regarding scientific theory as merely a con-
densed transcript of the immediate content of experience, as well
as from attempting the impossible task of translating theoretical
statements into statements about directly apprehended sensory quali-
ties. It has led him to emphasize the continuity of refined scientific
procedures with modes of solving problems on more primitive levels
of behavior, and to recognize in consequence that the conception
of scientific theory as a system of mere fiction makes incomprehen-
sible the whole practical life of man. It has enabled him to see that
the adequacy or validity of ideas is not warranted by their supposed
derivation from materials of sense, but rather by the consequences
of their use. And above all, it has served him as the means for show-
ing that science is not a disclosure of a reality superior to and
incompatible with the things of ordinary experience.

3 -

The central thesis of Dewey’s theory of science is that it does not
disclose realms of being antithetical to the familiar things of hfe,
simply because scientific objects are formulations of complex rela-
tions of dependence between things in gross experience. More spe-
cifically, the constructions of theoretical physics are viewed by him
as intellectual means for organizing the discontinuous occurrences
of directly experienced qualities, as ways of thinking about matters
in gross experience in order to obtain some measure of control over
their histories.

It follows directly from this thesis that scientific discoveries con-
cerning the conditions of occurrences of things in ordinary experi-
ence cannot possibly impugn the objective reality of the latter. Why
should the fact, for example, that the occurrence of heat and cold
is contingent upon certain distributions of molecular energies, con-
stitute ground for denying that the sun is hot or that snow is cold.^^
And why should the further fact that in the absence of definite
physiological conditions these qualities are not manifested, count
as reason for denying that heat and cold are objective features of
those existential situations in which both the physical and physio-
logical conditions are realized?

To be sure, physics is not concerned with the physiological con-
ditions for the occurrence of various qualities; for physics seeks to
find relational orders of dependence that are invariant for all per-

Deuoey^s Theory of Natural Science [ 107 ]

cipient organisms, and that are independent of the latter’s presence
or absence. But what is canonical for physics is not therefore a
measure of objective existence; and only an arbitrary preference,
rooted in an influential intellectual tradition, will assign exclusive
reality to invariant relational orders. In point of fact, even the prop-
erties which physics ascribes to its objects, such as mass, are mani-
fested only under certain contingent if pervasive conditions. Were
every property which is relational in this sense denied a place in
the objective order of nature, physics too should be regarded as
dealing only with what is subjective. The crux of the matter is that
if only absolutely invariant universal patterns of relations are assumed
to be genuinely objective, nothing that is individual, specific, and
limited can have any place in objective nature. But those who adopt
this criterion are then faced with the outrageous paradox of having
relations without terms to be related as the sole furniture of genuine
reality. Is the notion of a cat with a grin but no body a more fan-
tastic conception of the way of things?

Dewey’s account of scientific objects is thus accompanied by a
reaflirmation of the claims of gross experience. But the naive real-
ism he defends is free from the dogmatic naivete so frequently asso-
ciated with philosophies of common sense. He emphatically includes
the various qualities of ordinary experience among the ultimate fur-
niture of the world. But he does not assume that the immediate
apprehension of qualities constitutes knowledge of them. Kriowl-
edge for Dewey is always the terminus of inquiry y and involves the
establishment of relations of dependence between what is thus
directly experienced and what is not. What these relations are, how-
ever, is not to be settled by intuition or authority, whether the
problem under consideration involves issues of physics, private
morality or public policy. It is pre-eminently a matter requiring
reflective thought or experimental inquiry.

Indeed, it is precisely in this context that the objects of science
manifest their distinctive functions. It is in situations where one seeks
to discover the conditions upon which the occurrence of immediate
qualities depends, that scientific objects serve as general schema for
analyzing things of ordinary experience in terms of their systematic
relations to other events and potentialities in nature. Accordingly,
the postulated objects of theoretical physics are not things which
in turn require to be sensed or directly experienced. When viewed

[ io8 ] Sovereign Reason

in terms of their status identifiable in inquiry, they represent ways
of conceiving and ordering what is capable of being sensed and
experienced. No legitimate puzzle resides m the fact that the ob-
jects of physical theory do not possess the qualitative differentia of
things of every-day experience. A mystifying puzzle does arise if
the former are converted by some dialectical prestidigitation into
another set of individuals which require to be directly encountered
if they are to be adequately known.

4 -

An impressive quantity of concrete evidence confirms Dewey’s
account of the status of scientific objects, but there are also diffi-
culties which confront it. Both supporting evidence and difficulties
must now be briefly examined.

It is beyond reasonable dispute that at least one function of any
scientific theory is that of a generalized directive for treading the
complex maze of events with which men are directly confronted in
gross experience. For as has already been noted, every inquiry into
empirical subject-matter is initiated and controlled by problems
concerning matters that are encountered in such experience. And
every proposed resolution of such problems, every theory which
aims to specify the conditions upon which the occurrences generat-
ing these problems are contingent, must satisfy the minimal require-
ment of indicating factors to be found in gross experience through
which those conditions can be identified. For otherwise problems
are not solved, and theories are speculative fancies which cannot be
checked by observational data. Accordingly, even when a theory
postulates the existence of particles and processes which are quite
unlike the materials of ordinary experience, the raison d^etre of the
postulation is the enlarged and clarified understanding of the mutual
relations between these latter that the postulation may help to
achieve.

It would be superfluous to cite examples in which theoretical con-
structions do serve as guides for mastering men’s environment— the
full basis for this claim must be sought in the detailed history of
the theoretical sciences and the technologies nourished by them.
But apart from examples and history, the claim will be reinforced
if attention is directed to some familiar features of physical theory
and to certain circumstances of the use of such theory in inquiry*

Dewey'^s Theory of Natural Science [ 109 ]

A striking trait of theories in the natural sciences, and especially
of mathematical physics, is the absence of any mention in them of
specific places and dates or of individual objects and events. In
consequence, these theories do not describe anything actually exist-
ing in any specified sector of nature. How then does such a theory
acquire a specific import for specific problems dealing with specific
spatio-temporal events, for example for a problem concerning the
occurrence of a solar eclipse at some place on the earth’s surface?
The answer is well known. A theory can help resolve a problem
concerning definite spatio-temporal occurrences, only if it is sup-
plemented by special information about local configurations of
events and objects njohich the theory itself indicates as being relevant.
For solving the problem about the occurrence of an eclipse, for
example, the special information needed includes the relative posi-
tions and diameters of the sun, moon, and the earth at a certain time.
But the need for such supplementary information makes plain that
a theory is a generalized formula for resolving a broad class of
problems, and that one important function of the formula is to
indicate just what specific data must be secured about an actual
situation if a concrete instance of the class of problems is to be
solved. Accordingly, although a theory is not itself a description of
what happens to exist, it is at the very least a generalized plan for
guiding the direction of overt observation and experiment on what
does exist.

There is another feature of physical theory that deserves notice.
The fundamental assumptions of many comprehensive theories are
usually stated for so-called “pure” or “ideal” cases, and more gen-
erally theoretical statements are frequently formulated in terms of
“limiting” or “ideal” concepts. Such pure cases are rarely if ever
encountered in experience; and limiting concepts, sometimes as a
consequence of their mode of definition, cannot be taken as descrip-
tive characterizations of anything that is experimentally identifiable.
For example, no completely isolated physical systems occur in na-
ture, though at least one of Newton’s axioms of motion is stated for
just such a system; and notions such as that of instantaneous velocity
or perfect elasticity are widely employed in mechanics even though
no actual bodies can be directly subsumed under them. Nevertheless,
pure cases and ideal concepts have significant uses in inquiry: through
their use it is possible to state with maximum economy and com-

[ 1 10 ] Sovereign Reason

prehensive generality what are the relevant factors in qualitatively
diverse materials upon which the course of events depends, and
thereby to state the mutual interrelations of apparently independent
processes. However, and this is the essential point, the systematic
analysis that is achieved through the use of ideal concepts can be
carried through only if these concepts are associated with explicit
or tacit rules of overt procedure for handling materials of gross
experience. For since ideal concepts are not directly applicable to
the objects of ordinary experience, these latter must be “cooked”
and worked over if they are to be subsumed as “instances” under
such concepts. A theory which uses the notion of perfect elasticity,
for example, must be coupled with a set of directions that specify,
even if only vaguely, how bodies are to be classified and ordered
with respect to their elastic properties; otherwise the theory swims
in a void, and cannot serve to illumine anything actual. But if such
rules are inevitable supplements to viable theories employing ideal
concepts, those theories will always contain as an essential compo-
nent directives for discriminating relevant features in concrete sub-
ject-matters. It is in part because these associated rules of procedure
are frequently not formulated explicitly, that theories often seem so
utterly remote from and even incompatible with what is encoun-
tered in direct experience. And it is in part because scientific theories
are frequently interpreted simply on the basis of their formal struc-
ture, and in disregard of the tacit rules essential for their use in
dealing with specific existential problems, that the function of theo-
ries as guiding principles for overt observation and experiment is
often ignored.

5 -

It has been customary in the analysis and interpretation of science
to distinguish between two types of theory. One type, variously
labelled as “macroscopic,” “phenomenological,” and “abstractive,”
is said to “abstract” determinate relations between macroscopic,
directly identifiable objects, and to eschew all hypotheses which
assume “hidden” and “unobserveable” mechanisms that operate “be-
hind” the manifest phenomena, Newton’s theory of gravitation,
Fourier’s theory of heat conduction, and classical thermodynamics,
are the commonly cited examples of this type of physical theory;
and Newton’s famous dictum “Hypotheses non fingo” is generally

De^ey^s Theory of Natural Science [ iii ]

understood to mean that he declined to entertain theories of any
other type. The second type of theory, vanously called “micro-
scopic,” “hypothetical” and “physical,” does by contrast explicitly
postulate unobserveable particles, sub-microscopic processes, and
mechanisms not open to direct observation, in terms of which the
complex phenomena of gross experience are to be explained and
understood. Familiar examples of this type of theory are the numer-
ous atomic and electric theories of matter.

It is by no means a closed issue whether the distinction between
these two types of theory is either important or even weU-founded,
though this question wiE not be pursued here any further. The
relevance of this distinction for the present discussion is that it
helps to make explicit the chief objection usually raised against the
conception of scientific theory as being primarily an instrument for
the conduct of inquiry. This conception is frequently acknowl-
edged as illuminating and sound when it is stated for macroscopic
theories. For in such theories no domain of events and individuals
is postulated which is distinct from the events and objects en-
countered in ordinary experience; and accordingly, the scientific
objects assumed by such theories are easily construed as structures
of relations between the materials of gross experience. But the situa-
tion seems to be quite different in the case of microscopic theories.
The impressive successes of atomic and electronic theories of matter
in predicting and bringing into systematic order a wide variety of
phenomena, have convinced a good fraction of contemporary scien-
tists that the scientific objects postulated by theories of this type
are more than systems of relations between familiar objects, and
that on the contrary these scientific objects are concrete individuals,
possessing spatio-temporal locations and participating in dynamic
transactions with each other. Although it is generally admitted that
these scientific objects lack most of the qualitative traits which
mark off the familiar objects of experience, they are nevertheless
believed to be physical constituents and parts of these latter. In
brief, the scientific objects postulated by microscopic theories can-
not, so the objection runs, be adequately regarded simply as con-
ceptual means for organizing and analyzing the objects and events
of gross experience.

It must be acknowledged that on this point Dewey is not free
from ambiguity. On the one hand, he repeatedly averts that scien-

[ II2 ] Sovereign Reason

tific objects are general modes of activity, that they are discursively
elaborated formulations of connections noted in experience, that
they are correlations between changes, or that they are generahza--
tions of existential conditions founded on a statistical basis. Careful
readers of Dewey do not find it overly difficult to see the congru-
ence between these various characterizations. But on the other hand
he must cause discomfort even to a sympathetic reader when he
writes of swarms of atoms and electrons moving rapidly, or of
atoms giving rise to qualities of bitter and sweet. For surely, modes
of activity, formulations, correlations, and the rest, cannot intelli-
gibly be said to engage in motions, rapid or otherwise, or to give
birth in time to sensory qualities.

It is perhaps doubtful whether these apparent inconsistencies in
Dewey’s statements can be reconciled; and the task will not even be
attempted here. But something does need to be said in defense of
his account of scientific objects against the critique which draws
its ammunition from the prevalence of microscopic theories in mod-
em physics.

It must be noted, in the first place, that the interpretation of
scientific objects as systems of relations between things encountered
in ordinary experience and as generalized directives for analyzing
empirical materials, is intended primarily if not exclusively to be
an account of the status and function of scientific objects in the
context of inquiry. And as has already been indicated, whatever
else may be validly said about theories that postulate sub-microscopic
particles and processes, this much at least can be asserted with war-
rant— their role in inquiry is that of directives for handling observa-
tional materials and of formulations which express systems of rela-
tionships between such materials. For unless it were possible to
connect such theories with things and events that are open to direct
observation, the theories would contribute nothing to the resolution
of the specific existential problems which generate them. The “hid-
den’^ particles and processes postulated by theories of this type thus
serve as intermediary and auxiliary termini in the formulation of a
system of relationships whose ultimate termini are features of things
identifiable in gross experience. Accordingly, the cognitive function
in inquiry of the postulated elements in microscopic theories is
that of links in a system of conceptual means for treating effectively
objects in familiar experience.

Dewey^s Theory of Natural Science [ 113 ]

In the second place, there is good reason to believe that at least
in some cases the postulated elements of microscopic theories are
best conceived as complexes of relationships, rather than as con-
crete individuals comparable with the substantial things of gross
experience- This is not the occasion for arguing this point in detail
or with reference to specific microscopic theories- However, it is
at least worth noting that in the history of mathematics a similar
conclusion has been repeatedly reached; for example, instead of
construing complex numbers or the ‘‘imaginary” points of intersec-
tion of curves as a distinctive and self-subsisting type of number or
point, it has been found possible to view these postulated “entities”
as relational structures between the more familiar integers or “real”
points. A literal reading of the formulations of pure mathematics
may therefore be a naive and misleading one, for such a reading may
overlook the operative significance of what is being said. Siiriilarly,
a literal reading of the language of modem quantum theory may
also be misleading, especially since this theory often uses familiar
modes of speech (for example, the expressions “particle” and “mo-
mentum”) in senses that are explicitly recognized to be analogical
and metaphorical. There is indeed an influential if not thoroughly
consistent tendency among physicists to-day to dispense with in-
terpretations of even microscopic theories in terms of pictorial
models, and to see in the relations expressed by the pictorially
neutral mathematical formalism the essential operative content of
such theories. An example of this tendency is supplied by a recent
commentator, himself a mathematical physicist, on the perplexities
generated by the pictorial representation of light as both wave-like
and corpuscular: “The picture of what is happening in an optical
experiment can be construed in more than one way, and . . , dif-
ferent pictures, although they require different methods of mathe-
matical treatment, yield the same end-result for comparison with
observational measures,” (Sir Edmund Whittaker, From Euclid to
Eddington^ p. 138-) Accordingly, there is much in the actual prac-
tice of modem physics to support the view that the postulated sci-
entific objects of even microscopic theory should be taken to be pat-
terns of relations rather than concrete individuals and processes. The
conception of scientific objects as conceptual means for analyzing
and comprehending the things encotmtered in experience in terms of
their mutual relations, is thus not without a sound foundation.

[ 1 14 ] Sovereign Reason

Nonetheless, the possibility cannot be excluded, certainly not in
a wholesale fashion or on apriori grounds, that the postulated ele-
ments of microscopic theories may be concrete individuals, and that
the detailed empirical evidence may warrant the conclusion that
these elements are more than patterns of relations. Dewey’s con-
cern with natural science has focussed primarily on issues of logic
and method, and he has paid relatively little attention to this pos-
sibility. His theory of scientific objects as simply conceptual means
for the conduct of inquiry, can therefore not unjustly be charged
with being an incomplete account of the nature and function of
such objects. At the same time, it is worth noting that there is no
incompatibility between maintaining that scientific objects function
as conceptual tools in inquiry, and holding that in addition they play
a role as elements in the executive order of nature. An incompatibility
would be generated only if the former function of scientific objects
were claimed to be their exclusive one.

Dewey’s preoccupation with the instrumental role of scientific
objects in inquiry is in part a consequence of his identification of
knowledge as the outcome of inquiry into specific, individual exist-
ential situations. When knowledge is so identified then, as he him-
self notes, *‘The full and eventual reality of knowledge is carried in
the individual case, not in general laws isolated from use in
giving an individual case its meaning.” {Quest for Certainty^ p.
208.) Indeed, though he recognizes that the word “knowledge” has
many meanings, he maintains that in the sense he deliberately assigns
to it, it has an especially liberal and humane meaning-

It signifies events understood, events so discrlminately penetrated by
thought that mind is literally at home in them. It means comprehension,
or inclusive reasonable agreement. What is sometimes termed “applied”
science, may then be more truly science than is what is conventionally
called pure science. For it is directly concerned with not just instrumen-
talities, but instrumentalities at work in effecting modifications of exist-
ence in behalf of conclusions that are reflectively preferred. Thus con-
ceived the characteristic subject-matter of knowledge consists of fulfilling
objects, which as fulfillments are connected with a history to which
they give character. Thus conceived, knowledge exists in engineering,
medicine, and the social arts more adequately than it does in mathe-
matics, and physics. Thus conceived, history and anthropology are
scientific in a sense in which bodies of information that stop short with
general formulae are not. {Experience and Nature^ pp. 161-162.)

Once this standpoint is taken, almost everything Dewey has to say

Denvey^s Theory of Natural Science [ 115 I

about scientific objects is a direct consequence from it. But though
the sense he selects for the word “knowledge” is not the expression
of a personal whim or preference, and though his manner of iden-
tifying knowledge is supported by the long history of men’s efforts
to master their environment, it is also evident that from other stand-
points other things may require to be said about scientific objects.
For in the enterprise of science the word “knowledge” is frequently
employed, as Dewey quite readily acknowledges, to refer not only
to the outcome of inquiry into concrete individual affairs, but also
to the theoretical vision of pervasive orders in nature which mquiry
makes possible. An account of scientific objects which ascribes to
them an instrumental role for achieving knowledge in one of the
several senses of this word, clearly does not constitute a fully ade-
quate contextualist analysis of their function and nature.

6 .

There are other philosophies than Dewey’s which seek to defend
the objective reality of common-sense objects. But unlike most of
them, Dewey does not achieve his aim by viewing the whole of
nature in terms of distinctions that are known to be relevant only
for the human scene. He does not offer a resolution of the standing
problems of modern philosophy by clothing all of nature with
antliropomorphic traits, or interpreting the course of cosmic events
in terms of values that are of paramount concern only to men. The
continuity between man and nature which modem theories of knowl-
edge have helped to undermine and which Dewey wishes to estab-
lish, does not obliterate fundamental differences between features
that clearly characterize only human actions and those which are
presumed to be common to all things without exception. Whatever
else it may or may not achieve, Dewey’s philosophy of science does
not offer a view of things that is more obfuscating than the one it
wishes to replace. It is a genuine contribution to the clarification
of a basic human enterprise.

However, in spite of the brilliant dialectical skill with which
Dewey develops his interpretation of science, and notwithstanding
the substantial evidence that the history of science provides for it,
it cannot be claimed that his views on this subject have won general
assent. The difficulties of his literary style are notorious, and have
handicapped even first-rate minds in their attempt to penetrate to

[ ii6 ] Sovereign Reason

the essentials of his philosophy. Moreover, his theory of logic is in
ejffect and by implication a serious intellectual threat to social views
whose chief support is tradition and authority; and it would be
utopian to suppose that antecedent ideological commitments on the
part of his readers have not played a role in their evaluation of his
conception of science.

But there are also less external reasons for the hesitations which
even those in full sympathy with Dewey’s aims and over-all con-
clusions have experienced with his account of natural science. The
great William Harvey is reported to have said of Francis Bacon
that he wrote about science like a Lord Chancellor. Of Dewey it
can be said with equal justice that he writes about natural science
like a philosopher, whose understanding of it, however informed,
is derived from second-hand sources. With rare exceptions, the il-
lustrations he supplies for his major theses on the nature of physical
science and its method come from every-day inquiries of a fairly
elementary kind, or from popularized versions of the achievements
of theoretical physics. It is indeed curious that a thinker who has
devoted so much effort to clarifying the import of science as has
Dewey, should exhibit such a singular imconcem for the detailed
articulation of physical theory. His writings often give the impres-
sion that however sound his views on the status of scientific objects
may be, they have been arrived at by apriori reasoning from general
assumptions concerning the nature of knowledge which he takes to
be warranted on other grounds. He does not use the language cus-
tomary in discussions of scientific objects, possibly because he be-
lieves this language to be so burdened with traditional associations
that in employing it one become hopelessly entangled in the pre-
conceptions of dubious epistemologies. In any event, however, the
general absence from his writings of detailed analyses of specific
theoretical constructions, as well as his tendency to introduce dis-
tinctions that are not fully explained, have contributed to the feel-
ing of inconclusiveness which many of his readers share.

There is a disparaging sense, moreover, in which Dewey has been
a lone wolf in the formulation of his ideas on science. His central
views are in close agreement with conceptions that have been devel-
oped during the past half-century by eminent physicists concerned
with the methodology of their discipline. Nevertheless, though he
is obviously familiar with many of these analyses, he does not appear

Dewey^s Theory of Natural Science [ 117 ]

to have been strongly influenced by them, and he cites them only
rarely. But what is more to the point, he does not use these specialized
and expert studies to the best advantage in his own discussions; and
he employs home-grown arguments and formulations even where
more convincing ones are readily available. This tendency no doubt
contributes to the freshness of what Dewey has to say; but it also
serves to isolate him from important and allied contemporary
streams in the philosophy of science.

It is not easy to escape the conclusion— a judgment which is per-
haps true of all philosophic ventures— that Dewey’s discussion of
the relation of physics to ordinary experience constitutes a program
of work to be done rather than a systematically complete analysis;
and Dewey is probably the last man on earth to suppose that nothing
further remains to be said on the subject. But it is a program which
is accompanied by a refreshingly sane and wise perspective on
things, a clarifying conception of the significance of science, and
a wealth of brilliant apercus. In stating it, he has succeeded in show-
ing beyond reasonable doubt that the traditional and fatal antithesis
between science and ordinary experience is gratuitous, and he has
thereby helped to remove some of the intellectual obstacles to the
expansion of science and to the consequent enhancement of human
life. In stating it, he has also entrusted to those who must succeed
him in the endless task of criticism which is philosophy, an objective
for whose realization the best energies of thinking men would not
be misspent.

7

Dewey's Reconstruction of Logical Theory

I.

Since the turn of the present century Dewey’s thought has been
Steadily preoccupied with the character and conditions of controlled
inquiry; and he has no less insistently claimed that the elimination
of many of the contemporary confusions in morals, the sciences of
man, and social policy, calls for a reconstruction of logical theory.
He himself records that his early interest in logic was stimulated
by the intellectual scandal involved in the common separation of
science from morals; and he attributes his development of instru-
mentalism to his conviction that ‘^‘the construction of a logic, that
is, a method of elfective inquiry, which would apply without abrupt
breach of continuity to the fields designated by both of these words,
is at once our needed theoretical solvent and the supply of our
greatest practical want”^

I. Contemporary American Philosophy (edited by Geo. P. Adams and
Wm. P. Montague), VoL H, p. 25.

[nSl

Deavey^s Reconstruction of Logical Theory [

Dewey has, however, not only repeatedly called for the recon-
struction of the theory of inquiry, but has himself proposed such
a reconstruction. Whether as a consequence the confusions to which
he has called attention will m the future be less frequent, is prob-
lematic. In any case, we still have with us uncriticised preferences
masquerading as authoritative values, force parading as reasonable-
ness, dogmatic appeals to the self-evidence of certain goods and
norms offered as the essence of wisdom, arbitrary juxtapositions of
factual material presented as social science, or the formulation of
goals without consideration of the mechanisms required to imple-
ment them as significant social planning.

Nevertheless, there has been a change in the intellectual atmos-
phere since the turn of the century, and only the ignorant would
maintain that Dewey has had no influence in effecting it. We are
less willing than before to appraise the merits of economic and
social proposals without calculating their probable consequences,
and without controlling their possible issues by painstaking factual
evidence. We are suspicious both of large-scale generalizations in
social theory and history which are supported primarily by appeals
to alleged necessities of thought, and also of statistical and other
factual studies which are not controlled by clearly formulated theo-
retical assumptions grounded in ascertained facts. We are less easily
taken in by the claims of scientific workers that their most recent
conclusions are revelations of a final reality, or that the problems
of society and morals must be conceived and resolved in terms of
the specialized findings of some branch of physics. We are no less
sceptical of philosophers who dismiss the specific conclusions of the
sciences as not being genuine cases of knowledge and as not being
relevant to our understanding of nature; and we do not find plausible
their claims to a more profound and more certain theory of the
universe than emerges from the detailed studies of the sciences, if
it is not supported by the type of investigation which we identify
as scientific method. We are not so easily deceived or frightened by
statements supported by scientific or philosophical authorities that
nature is nothing but a dance of atoms or electrons, that it is nothing
but the manifestation of spirit, that it is something intrinsically
unknowable, that human experience is nothing but an appearance,
or that the nature of things in general places some interdiction or
special blessing upon social change. We have become conscious of

[ 120 ] Sovereign Reason

how easy it is to transpose distinctions in one context to other con-
texts in which they have no ascertainable sense, and we have learned
to estimate the meaning and validity of propositions in terms of their
function and operative role in determinate situations. In short, we
are conscious of having at our disposal an effective instrument of
criticism, a set of logical principles in terms of which claims to
knowledge may be approximately adjudicated, and in terms of which
programs of action may be controlled.

It is not easy for anyone who has not himself lived through the
great intellectual changes of the past half-century to estimate just
how much of this instrument of criticism is directly the product of
Dewey’s thought. Other influences than those coming from his
writings have played upon the contemporary scene, and Dewey
would be the last one to maintain that he owes nothing to his intel-
lectual predecessors and contemporaries. Moreover, to many a
reader brought up in the intellectual atmosphere created at least in
part by Dewey, Dewey’s books contain much that now seems com-
mon-place and matter-of-course, and, like Shakespeare and the
Bible, appear to be full of good quotations. Dewey is now part of
our common intellectual heritage, though not everything he has
taught has found common acceptance. Accordingly, the freshness
and historical significance of his approach to logical theory can best
be recovered and understood by placing it in the context of the
problems which demanded a reconstruction of logic.

Dewey has explained that with the break-up of the medieval in-
tellectual synthesis, due largely to the rise of modem science and
its mathematical and experimental techniques, new systems of logic
were launched which attempted to formulate the conditions and
the methods found successful in achieving credible and warranted
beliefs. However, “there soon appeared a division which, while
technical in outer appearance, may be said to have had an almost
tragic eflFect upon the intellect of the western world. This was the
split between those who appealed exclusively to experience in the
form of sense perception as the source of valid beliefs and those
who appealed to reason in the form of mathematical concepts as the
ultimate authority.”^ But while in the natural sciences this dualism
of sense and reason was harmoniously solved in the actual practice
and the habits of scientific workers, the resolution of the difficulty

2. Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences^ Vol. 9, p. 601*

Dewey^s Keconstruction of Logical Theory [ 121 ]

did not receive a coherent theoretical formulation. In consequence,
the split had a disastrous import for the still embryomc sciences of
man and society, where the method of reason and the method of
experience vied with each other for exclusive control and success-
ively dominated research— with the consequence that these disci-
plines remamed barren of warranted conclusions and contributed
controversy rather than illumination to the pressing problems of
modem society. Accordingly, a reconstmcted logical theory is
needed. This logic must generalize the acknowledged methods of
the natural sciences— methods which in practice harmoniously unite
observation, theoretical construction, mathematical reasoning, and
experimental verification— and must exhibit the traditional separa-
tion of sense and reason as theoretically unwarranted. The recon-
structed logic will thus insist that “ideas and principles must be
employed to deal overtly and actively with ‘facts’ if, on one side,
the facts are to be significant and if, on the other, ideas and theories
are to receive test and verification. Experimental logic would resolve
the controversy, now four centuries old, between reason and sense
experience, by making both concepts and facts elements in and
instruments of intelligently controlled action.”®

If this has been the goal of a reconstructed logic— a reasonable
goal, it will seem to many— why has it not already been achieved
and what obstacles have stood in its way? Other men in other gen-
erations have been preoccupied with problems of intellectual method,
and it may seem strange that it should have remained for our
period to attempt the theoretical synthesis of these contending
claimants to intellectual authority. The answer in this case as in
many others of like kind is historical, and points to the accumula-
tion of specific scientific findings in our own age which have been
absent in previous ones,

One hundred fifty years ago a great philosopher could maintain
that since Greek antiquity logic has not had to retrace a single
step nor been able to make any further advance, so that, accordingly,
logic was complete and perfect. In the light of the intense activity
during the past three generations in correcting and expanding the
content of logical theory beyond recognition by its founders, this
estimate is a curiosity; it supplies more hints concerning the philo-

3. Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 9, p. 605.

[ 122 ] Sovereign Reason

sophical outlook of the men of the eighteenth century than about
the subject concerning which it was made. Indeed, there is no
reason to suppose that, granted a favorable cultural milieu, such an
intense activity in logical researches will not continue indefinitely
into the future. Why then did a man of unusually shrewd intelli-
gence and learning, and why do some of our own contemporaries
with perhaps no less intelligence, commit themselves to such an
appraisaP

To many reflective minds of the eighteenth century the New-
toman conception of nature seemed to be the paradigm upon which
every rational science must be modeled, and to whom the Newtonian
theory of science constituted the set of necessary principles for
acquiring, ordering, and interpreting all knowledge. The geometry
of Euclid and the mechanics of Newton were the only familiar
systems of deductive mathematics, the properties of things capable
of formulation in the then existing mathematics were taken to be
the sole objective properties of things, and the limitations and de-
fects of known mathematical techniques were assumed to mark
off the inherent boundaries of human reason. It was, accordingly,
a period much concerned with discovering the logical foundations
for allegedly indubitable truths concerning the physical world and
our powers of apprehending them, and with constructing an intel-
lectual foundation for moral and esthetic judgments so as to render
them congruous with the logical and physical assumptions of the
natural sciences. Lack of knowledge of alternative comprehensive
mathematical and physical systems was construed as evidence of
their impossibility, and the contemporary achievements of the
sciences were riveted into the final structure of nature and reason.
Biology, moreover, was still largely a classificatory discipline. The
physiological and animal basis of human thought was only dimly
understood, and human reason, occurring in a world conceived in
terms of the specific categories of the dominant physics, was set off
sharply from the humbler practices of the common arts. Given the
conceptions which dominated the sciences of the day, given the
sense of finality and certainty with respect to the conclusions of the
physics of the day, it is not strange that logical theory itself should
have been regarded as perfect and as immune to modification. And
to the extent that contemporary thinkers are still dominated by
philosophies devised as intellectual bases for sciences so conceive^

Dewey's Reconstmctio 7 i of Logical Theory [ 123 ]

it is understandable why they also should formulate similar opin-
ions as to the proper content of logical theory.

Withm seventy-five years, however, the intellectual scene w’^as
already shiftmg, and the renaissance of logical research was begun.
Leading the van of the events which stimulated the growth of newer
conceptions of knowledge and nature were the achievements of
the mathematicians. They discovered new systems of geometry
which were consistent alternatives to the ancient discipline, and
thus challenged the authority of theories of knowledge which granted
exclusive validity to the system of Euclid in particular and assumed
the possibility of apodictic knowledge of existential matters in gen-
eral. They invented and systematized new forms of algebra and
new^ techniques of analysis, which gradually undermined dogmatic
appeals to self-evidence as criteria of factual as well as mathematical
truth; and they thus called attention to the fundamental role which
symbolic operations play in the development of deductive systems
and m the attainment of knowledge of matters of fact. No less sig-
nificant was the growing aw^areness of the limitations of traditional
canons of formal validity. Mathematicians and mathematically
trained students of formal logic soon developed algebraic algorithms
w’^hich were startlingly effective constructive and critical devices
for handhng complicated types of deductions such as occur in mathe-
matics-deductions which were not easily treated by traditional
methods; and they soon established the fact that the restriction of
formal logic to the theory of the syllogism, the conception of formal
mathematics as the science of simple quantities, and the isolation and
theoretical separation of the techniques of formal logic from those
of mathematics were unwarranted prejudgments. Mathematicians
and formal logicians thus constructed impressive intellectual tools
that served a double end: on the one hand, they became means for
the development of comprehensive sciences of nature which were
to challenge the claims made for existing theories as the only con-
ceivable ones; and on the other hand, they supplied crucial evidence
for testing the adequacy of conceptions of knowledge and inquiry.

These developments in the formal sciences went hand in hand
with those in the physical disciplines. It was discovered before long
that the specific categories of Newtonian mechanics had only a
limited applicability. For the task of bringing into systematic order
vast ranges of phenomena (those studied, for example, in optics,

[ 124 ] Sovereign Reason

electricity, or thermodynamics), required the introduction of char-
acteristic modes of analysis which differed in important ways from
those employed by Newton. The theory of probability, heretofore
used almost exclusively only in connection with games of chance
and errors of observation, now came to be employed as an integral
part of physical theories themselves, and was extended with some
success to the study of social statistics. In consequence, the older
conceptions and formulations of the ideals and logical structure of
scientific knowledge were given a critical overhauling. It was seen
that the assumptions of classical physics were not universal necessi-
ties of nature but were only somewhat parochial principles of
analysis suitable for handling a limited type of material; and it was
shown that at least in some cases what were previously assumed to
be inherent necessities of reason were simply the analytic conse-
quences of adopting one of several alternative techniques of meas-
urement. These innovations in the natural sciences, as well as the
growing abstractness and non-descriptive character of physical
concepts, led to an intense concern with the relation of theory to
every-day experience; and outstanding workers in the sciences them-
selves contributed illximinating studies on the links connecting theo-
retical formulations in the sciences with the familiar materials and
activities of every-day observation* It became evident, for example,
that though physics was abstract, physical theories were not ab-
stracted from sensory qualities; and it also became apparent that if
the meaning of theories was to be understood, that understanding
was not achieved by regarding them as photographic reports of
some hidden reality. In general, therefore, theoretical formulations
were recognized as intellectual constructions devised for specific
ends, so that their meaning and validity must be determined within
the specific contexts in which they were introduced— in terms of
the operations (observational, experimental, and mathematical) rele-
vant to their normal functioning. By increasing our knowledge and
by suggesting alternative possibilities of formulation and analysis,
these developments in modem science and mathematics have had
the effect of travel in broadening the mind and freeing it from local
and traditional prejudices. Accordingly, any conception of knowl-
edge and inquiry which cannot square itself with these develop-
ments— any logic which demands, for example, indubitable first-
principles and incorrigible conclusions of inquiry— cannot consti-

De^ey^s Reconstruction of Logical Theory [ 125 ]

tute an adequate novum organum for guiding and criticizing
scientific research.

The perhaps inevitable scepticism and agnosticism which might
have become pervasive as a consequence of these intellectual changes,
was counteracted by the impact of evolutionary biology upon con-
ceptions of logic and knowledge. Thinkers who took seriously the
emphasis of modem biology upon the genesis of human functions
from an animal basis and upon their role in adapting the organism
and its environment to each other, found it impossible to hold that
human reasoning powers did not also have a history, or that the
rational faculties do not also have an adaptive function. They found
it implausible to believe that the latest conclusions of the sciences
were the final ones, that the human orgamsm was just the passive
recipient of impulses from the physical world, or that scientific
research and its outcome were not themselves at least partly instru-
mental in the process of biological and social adjustment. But these
supposals, instead of leading to scepticism as to the possibility of
knowledge, can readily engender a contrary effect. For if thought
is a biological process, the outcome of thought is adequate to its
object to the extent that it permits a more satisfactory adaptation
of organism and environment. If the present instmmentalities for
acquiring knowledge did not emerge full-grown with the beginning
of the race, but are the products of historical trials and errors, their
validity and adequacy must be construed and tested in terms of the
success with which they make possible an adjustment between or-
ganic needs and physical environment. And if knowledge, conceived
in the fashion of an infallible grasp of final truths without the medi-
ation of overt organic activity, is not something which modem
science supplies, then knowledge must be conceived in such a way
that it is just the sort of thing scientific methods do achieve. Thus
one important consequence of modem biology upon conceptions
of logic has been the rejection of an antecedent or apriori definition
of knowledge, and the substitution for it of something which can
be identified as the product of an identifiable procedure. More gen-
erally, modem evolutionary biology supplied fresh clues for resolv-
ing the dualisms between mind and nature, or reason and sense. For
according to it, mind is to be construed not as a mysterious power
capable of grasping with finality the structure of a world ahen to
it, but as a specific mode of behavior of organic beings in various

[ 126] Sovereign Reason

contexts. In consequence, human thought appears as continuous
with the physical and biological activity of bodies, and the recon-
structive and inventive powers of reason are grounded in the compli-
cated mechanisms of the human orgamsm. It thus became possible
to regard the events and qualities occurring in the human scene as
much as the products of natural processes, and as genuine clues to
the structures and mechanisms of nature, as are the objects discov-
ered or postulated in the science of physics.

This rough inventory of the fresh materials thrown up by almost
a century of research supplies the background for the reconstruction
of logical theory which Dewey has offered. Some of this material
began to influence his thought only at later periods of his devel-
opment. Accordingly, his attempts to work into one coherent theo-
retical formulation the instrumentalities of modem science exhibit
shifting stresses—shifts which reflect the impact of new and fre-
quently unconnected contributions to methods of inquiry upon a
mind sensitive to the complexity of his subject. He once confessed
that he appeared to himself as “unstable, chameleon-like, yielding
one after another to many diverse and even incompatible influences;
struggling to assimilate something from each and yet striving to
carry it forward in a way that is logically consistent with what has
been learned from its predecessors.”^ The shifts in Dewey’s thought,
examined in terms of the specific influences which played upon him,
would be the study not only of an individual thinker but of a period.

2 .

What then, granting this background and omitting technical de-
tails, are the outstanding features of Dewey’s conception of logic^
i) Perhaps the most characteristic trait of Dewey’s reconstructed
logic is the setting or context he supplies for the consideration of
logical distinctions and principles. He takes for granted that reflec-
tive thinking is an activity which can be identified as genuinely as
can the interplay of physical and chemical forces; and he assumes
as a hypothesis that it is an activity which occurs only when some
felt dilEculty (theoretical or practical) in a situation calls it forth
as an instrament for its resolution. All of Dewey’s specific analyses
are thus tacitly based upon an appraisal of the history of men’s
efforts to achieve satisfactory solutions of their problems, and upon

4. Contemporary American Fhihsophy, Vol, H, p. 22.

Denjoey^s Reconstruction of Logical Theory [ 127 ]

a comparative study and evaluation of different generalized methods
men have used in removing obstacles to smoothly flowing activities.
Methods of inquiry are accordingly not private, individual affairs.
Judgment of their soundness requires the study of human history
in order to determine which of the methods actually employed
have, in the long run, been satisfactory in the resolution of diffi-
culties. Dewey’s conception of logical theory is an immediate
corollary from this initial identification of its subject-matter: ‘‘if
thinking is the way m which deliberate reorganization of experi-
ence is secured, then logic is such a clarified and systematized formu-
lation of the procedures of thinking as will enable the desired
reconstruction to go on more economically and efficiently.”®

In consequence, to those who identify logical theory with formal
logic, Dewey’s claim to the title of logician has never seemed appro-
priate, and he has been adjudged by many as simply a descriptive
anthropologist or psychologist. It is not profitable to quarrel about
labels, but it is worth remarking that if, for example, Dewey’s writ-
ings are classified as belonging to anthropology, the content of this
discipline must be enlarged beyond its usual bounds. For though the
situations in which, according to him, logical distinctions are rele-
vant are situations of inquiry and therefore of human activity, his
attention is directed upon what the operations of logic contribute
to the specific goal of inquiry (that is, to the controlled resolution
of problems). His concerns are therefore evaluative rather than
descriptive. If Dewey’s logical theory runs the danger of being
confused with psychology, he gladly takes the risk because he is
concerned with specifying in just what contexts the familiar logi-
cal operations (e.g,, definition, classification, deduction, etc.) are
valuable and vahd. It is essential to specify these contexts in order
to prevent an unwarranted transference of those values and norms
to other contexts. For indication of the situations in which logical
devices are actually employed closes the door to interpretations of
the identifiable functions of logical principles in ways not relevant
to, or not compatible with, their identifiable operative roles in
inquiry.

Dewey’s insistence upon construing the meaning of logical oper-
ations in terms of their specific functions in the context of inquiry
is one of his most illuminating insights, though at the same time it

5. Recomtruction in Philosophy, p. 134.

[ 128 ] Sovereign Reason

has been the source of most of the criticisms that have been levelled
at him. Consider, for example, the distinct but related roles he
assigns to sensory observation and reasoning— thereby harmoniously
resolving the dualism which has been one motivation for his recon-
struction of logic. The occurrence of qualitative perceptions, rev-
eries, speculations and fancies in contexts other than that of inquiry
is controlled by habit, chance circumstance, or native propensity.
But within a reflective context the situation is otherwise. The nature
of the problem in situations involving felt difficulties does not usu-
ally spring into full view immediately, and must be sought for and
identified. Observation then becomes controlled by suggestions or
hypotheses, and sensory qualities are not received passively but are
deliberately selected and isolated from a larger qualitative context.
The identification of the problem is thus achieved neither by sub-
cutaneous thought nor by random activity, but by overt activity
controlled by ideas. Moreover, when the problem has been located,
attempted solutions of it involve further controlled observation,
instituted by hypotheses for the sake of obtaining factual evidence
for them. Accordingly, sense and reason are cooperatively engaged
throughout controlled inquiry. Perceptual material, gathered in the
light of entertained suggestions, serves as means for locating the
difficulty and supplies critical evidence for proposed solutions of
it; ideas or hypotheses, without being simply abstracted from ma-
terials of sense and without being self -authenticating, serve as plans
of research, as ways of obtaining and ordering sensory material, and
as suggestions for so rearranging existential material that the initial
difficulty may disappear. The dualism of sense and reason is thus
not an insoluble philosophical problem in inquiry.

Consider again Dewey’s discussion of the role of those formal
principles which in logic are usually characterized as necessary
truths. They are shown by him to be capable of playing two roles:
that of procedural principles, which state what conditions must be
instituted in order to make unambiguous the reference of terms;
and that of transformative rules for, or intermediary links in, opera-
tions upon and with symbols. It is no doubt possible to interpret
the necessary laws of logic as formulations of fundamental invari-
ants of all nature, and the like. The pertinent question, however,
is whether such interpretations are at all relevant for ascertaining
the significance of such principles in the context of inquiry. It is

Dewey^s Reconstructio?i of Logical Theory [ 129 ]

Dewey’s singular merit to have shown that in this context the mani-
fest function of these propositions constitutes their one identifiable
meaning. The history of thought reveals a progressive diminution
in the number of propositions which are assumed to be capable of
demonstration without appeal to experiment and observation, but
which nevertheless are claimed to formulate factual relations be-
tween properties of things. Propositions belonging to the natural
and social sciences are necessary and irrefutable by experience, it
is now clear, only if , in a broad but identifiable sense, they are
definitory; otherwise, they are contingent truths, corrigible by
further inquiry. Only in logic and in some branches of mathematics
does the claim continue that propositions in these disciplines rep-
resent apriori knowledge of the structure of things. The analysis
Dewey has made of necessary propositions may not finally dispose
of the issue to the satisfaction of everyone. But his analysis does
show at any rate that when the propositions of logic are construed
in terms of their functions in inquiry, the claim that those proposi-
tions formulate apriori truths about existence is entirely gratuitous.

Or consider, as a final example, Dewey’s resolution of the oft-
discussed question as to the “criteria” of truth. It is patently desir-
able and important to have a method for identifying genuine cases
of knowledge, and for distinguishmg between valid and spurious
cognitive claims. To be sure, it may not be* possible to persuade a
wholesale sceptic or dogmatist to recognize such a distinction. The
distinction nevertheless is tacitly recognized when, for example, we
accept as reliable the contents of an Ephemeris, but not the horo-
scope of an astrologer. What, then, are the earmarks of knowledge
that is authentic, and in what way does such knowledge differ from
ungrounded belief? Philosophers have sought to answer such ques-
tions by proposing various “theories” of truth, each of which os-
tensibly supplies not only an analysis of what is the meaning of
“truth” but also a criterion for distinguishing the true from the
false. These alternate “theories” are, however, in sharp disagree-
ment with one another; and what is more to the point, their pro-
posed criteria of truth turn out to be quite irrelevant to the actual
problems of inquiry. But whatever be the philosophical theory of
truth that one may adopt, the validity of truth-claims is identified
on the basis of whether or not the claims are products of com-
petent inquiries. At any rate, this is Dewey’s view. He identifies

[ 130 ] Sovereign Reason

authentic knowledge (which he calls ‘'warranted assertibility”) as
that which is achieved by an inquiry whose features conform to a
determinate logical pattem—a pattern exhibited in those inquiries
in the history of man which have shown themselves effective in
obtaining solutions for the problems generating the investigations.

However, anything identified as knowledge on the basis of being
the product of such inquiries will embody the character of the
logic employed. We must not expect that an assertion warranted
by scientific method is above revision, for the method of science is
not infallible. That method is, however, progressively self-cor-
rective, and provides for the revision of its products in the hght of
further controlled inquiry. The degree of confidence we are en-
titled to have in an assertion is therefore a function of the thorough-
ness with which we have tested it with the best methods available.
We must, accordingly, rely on the integrity of the logical method
we employ to secure dependable conclusions and to identify and
distinguish the true from the false. There is no way of discovering
what things are like before we have inquired into them, and there
is no way of ascertaining the adequacy of a logical method before
we have exercised it to reveal its powers and limitations. All con-
ceivable methods of conducting inquiry have an equal apriori claim
on our attention; but historical experience has taught us that not
all methods are equally effective. If we do not wish to be constantly
betrayed by claims to knowledge, we must institute modes of in-
quiry in accordance with certain logical requirements. The general
problem of truth, on Dewey’s view, is thus the problem of perfect-
ing methods of inquiry which, in the long run, exhibit themselves
as competent to do the job for which they are invented.

2) It will now be apparent that on Dewey’s conception of logic,
logical principles are formulations of conditions which must be in-
stituted if an inquiry is to satisfy the conditions of being a con-
trolled one. Accordingly, logical forms are understood by him to
be identifiable traits which things and events acquire only upon
entering inquiry and which things do not possess antecedently.
This is a view which many thinkers have found too difficult to
accept; and indeed it is a truistically false view if “logical form”
is taken to designate certain structures of “facts” or statements,
whose existence does not depend upon these elements entering the
context of inquiry. What then is Dewey’s meaning? According to

Dewey^s Reconstruction of Logical Theory [ 131 ]

him, things and qualities acquire functions in inquiry which they
did not have antecedently to it, and the specifically distinct n2)ays in
which things function in this context is just what he understands
by logical form. For example, perceptual material in its sheer
existential status does not have the logical form of being evidence,
nor does the occurrence of an idea in revery have the status of a
hypothesis— any more than a bear is always a target— except on the
occasions when these items enter appropnate contexts involving
specific types of activity.

This way of looking upon the matter represents a self-conscious
attempt to steer a median course between an empiricism for which
logical traits are psychological, in the sense of being mental, and
a realism for which logic sets apriori limits upon the characters of
existence. Dewey’s conception of logic thus offers the alternative
hypothesis, according to which logical forms are not mentalistic,
and yet are traits of things (that is, modes of behavior) only when
things are caught up in reflective inquiry and are subjected to the
conditions required for inference. This conception supports the
analysis of logical propositions as instrumental in reflective inquiry,
because they are taken to specify the means for securing the con-
ditions (that is, for installing the requisite logical forms) which will
carry inquiry to a successful termination.

It must be noted, however, that while logical principles are not
formulations of relations between things independently of their oc-
currence in inquiry, they are not arbitrary rules. On Dewey’s view,
what the conditions are for satisfactory inquiry is a discovery about
them, and is as much a discovery as that the human body needs food
to survive or that sound requires a material medium for its trans-
mission. In general, therefore, logical principles are just one special
class of formulations which state the conditions or means for the
attainment of ends or consequences. If the notion of logical prin-
ciples as instruments or tools is taken seriously, their adequacy
must evidently be contingent upon the character of the materials
upon which they are employed and upon the objectives they are
to attain; and there is no way of discovering whether they are
indeed adequate until we have made the attempt to use them. Dewey
is thus in agreement with all those who have maintained (sometimes
in criticism of what they take to be his position) that in some sense
principles of inquiry are grounded in the nature of things. They

[ 132 ] Sovereign Reason

are, for him, grounded in the requirements of controlled inquiries,
which are manifestly matters of existence. But one must add that
just as wood-pulp is not paper, and is potentially paper only in
relation to determinate chemical transformations, so a segment of
existence is not intrinsically evidence or datum, and it possesses
such logical functions only in relation to the equally determinate
operations of controlled inquiry.

Dewey’s reconstruction of logic thus involves what has been
called a genetic approach, so that, consequently, teleological cate-
gories are prominent in his theory. He has evaluated logical methods
in terms of a natural history of knowledge, and he has been con-
cerned with their efficacy in transforming ignorance and error into
warrantable and reliable science. He has accordingly tried to under-
stand the refined instruments of intellectual analysis as devices
having their origin in the activities of biological organisms coping
with their environment, and as factors contributing to the achieve-
ment of specific socio-biological ends. Inquiry is thus a genetic
process, having natural beginnings and endings, and the continuum
of inquiries supplies the materials for appraising the meaning and
the worth of the mechanisms involved in achieving those ends. On
Dewey’s view, therefore, the "^justification” of logical methods must
always be given on historical grounds, and not on grounds which
derive their authority from anterior criteria of validity. And in
consonance with his identification of logical operations as factors
in a process, his analysis of them is in terms of the general functions
they perform in that process. This, perhaps, is the heart of his logi-
cal theory,

Dewey’s genetic approach has, however, brought him the re-
reproach that his theory is based on the genetic fallacy. It is certainly
a confusion to mistake questions of temporal origin or temporal
order with questions of adequacy and validity; and, regrettably,
Dewey has sometimes argued, or at least given the appearance
of so arguing, that the validity of previous logical systems may
be determined on the basis of the character of the historical
period during which they originated. But the use of the ge-
netic method does not necessarily involve the commission of the
genetic fallacy. It is a fallacy to declare that the theory of the syllo-
gism is faulty because it was first formulated at a time when detailed
knowledge of mathematics and physics was inferior to our own;

Dewey^s Reconstruction of Logical Theory [ 133 ]

but it is not a fallacy to insist that the adequacy of this theory as
an instrument of inquiry and criticism must be estimated in terms
of how it has hindered or advanced the pursuit of knowledge
throughout its history. Nor is it a fallacy to maintain, on the ground
that knowledge is the product of inquiry, that the logical worth of
a conclusion must be evaluated in terms of the methods employed
to reach and test it; for a statement considered apart from the evi-
dence for it is not a conclusion at all, and cannot be assigned any
cognitive status.

In general, therefore, the validity of a belief is not determined
by its origin. But if a belief, taken as the conclusion of controlled
inquiry, involves a prior reconstruction of experience, and if a
belief, to be rightly understood, requires an understanding of the
methods of testing and criticising it, then its meaning as well as its
validity can not be rendered without reference to the procedures
of which it is a product. We mislead ourselves if we suppose that
we understand what a physicist tells us about the latent energies
of atomic nuclei or what a biologist tells about the structure of
chromosomes, if we neglect the contexts in which such statements
have relevance and if we are ignorant of the operations in terms of
which nuclei and chromosomes are defined and identified. For it is
not knowledge but images that we then possess.

3) A logical theory is not complete if it does not provide some
guide to the understanding and appraisal of the refined conclusions
of modem theoretical science. The logical issues involved are rele-
vant for the consideration of scientific theories at almost any stage
of scientific development; but a guide is particularly important at
a time when new developments in sub-atomic physics and in cos-
mology have given rise to amazingly contradictory philosophic
interpretations of them. For example, some writers appraise the
latest theories of science as disclosures of an ultimate reality, incom-
patible with the reality of the familiar human scene; others construe
them as simply convenient fictions with no firm standing in the
order of nature; and still others offer intricate variations upon these
themes.

Dewey's approach, however, challenges the relevance of such
interpretations for the understanding of scientific theories, by
simply considering the function of theories in the specific contexts
in which they are cognitively employed. He finds no difficulty in

[ 134 ] Sovereign Reason

showing, for example, that neither in pure research nor in the appli-
cation of theoretical physics to problems of technology does the
issue ever arise whether physics has located an ultimate reality or
not. He has no more difficulty in concluding that to ask whether
a theory is fictional or not assumes a prior conception of reality—
a conception formulated antecedent to the findings of specific
inquiries, and which therefore has no cognitive worth.

But his fundamental criticism of these interpretations is that they
misconceive the function of theories and fail to study them in their
identifiable roles in research and apphcation. These interpretations
are predicated on the assumption that it is the business of a theory
to offer a description or photographic picture of some segment of
nature. But a contextual analysis which pays attention to a theory’s
function in inquiry shows, that on the contrary, the business of a
theory is to organize inquiries, to make possible extensive correla-
tions of measurable properties of things, and to suggest ways of
introducing experimental action so as to resolve the specific prob-
lems of inquiry. The electrons postulated by a theory are defined
exclusively by that theory, and are defined in such a way that
they have none of the familiar qualities of objects in daily experi-
ence; electrons are thus a set of complicated relations between meas-
urable traits of things, and in inquiry at any rate they can be assigned
no reality prior or superior to that of common objects of experience.
As Dewey points out,

That heat is a mode of motion does not signify that heat and cold as
qualitatively experienced are “unreal,” but that the qualitative experience
can be treated as an event measured in terms of units of velocity of move-
ment, involving units of positions and time, so that it can be connected
with other events or changes similarly formulated. . . . The resolution
of objects and nature as a whole into facts stated exclusively in terms
of quantities which may be handled in calculation, such as saying that
red is such a number of changes while green is another, seems strange
and puzzling only when we fad to appreciate what it signifies. In reality,
it is a declaration that this is the effective way to think things; the effec-
tive mode in which to frame ideas of them, to formulate their meanings,
. . . Since these correlations are what physical inquiry does know, it is
fair to conclude that they are what it intends or means to know.^

The elimination of qualities from the theoretical formulations
of physics does not therefore eliminate them from existence; and

6. The Quest for Certainty^ pp. 1 29-1 34.

Dewey's Reco 7 istruction of Logical Theory [ 135 ]

while science renders more perfect the cognitive experiencing of
things, knowledge is not the exclusive mode of experiencing. Ac-
cordingly, even if it were possible-which by definition it is not
—to have a qualitative experience of electrons, we would not thereby
know them any better or more profoundly than we do at present.

The bearing of his conception of logic upon the interpretation of
science is summed by Dewey himself too clearly to require peri-
phrasis.

There is something both ridiculous and disconcerting in the way in
which men have let themselves be imposed upon, so as to infer that
scientific ways of thinking of objects give the inner* reality of things,
and that they put a mark of spuriousness upon all other ways of think-
ing of them, and of perceiving and enjoying them. It is ludicrous because
these scientific conceptions, like other instruments, are hand-made by
man in pursuit of realization of a certain interest— that of the maximum
of convertibility of every object of thought into any and every other.
It is a wonderful ideal; the ingenuity which man has shown in devising
means of realizing the interest is even more marvelous. But these ways
of thinking are no more rivals of or substitutes for objects as directly
perceived and enjoyed than the power-loom, which is a more efiecuve
instrument for weaving cloth than was the old hand-loom, is a substitute
and rival for cloth. The man who is disappomted and tragic because he
cannot wear a loom is in reality no more ridiculous than are the persons
who feel troubled because the objects of scientific conceptions of natu-
ral things have not the same uses and values as the tmngs of direct
experience.'^

3 -

* These, in outline, are some of the central themes in Dewey’s
logical theory. It is an impressive performance, whatever be the final
judgment passed on the validity of the plan or the details of his
reconstruction. But it is only fair to say that Dewey has not been
the first to venture a unified picture of controlled inquiry. The
nineteenth century— to restrict mention to the period during which
Dewey came to intellectual maturity— witnessed several attempts to
formulate comprehensive accounts of the principles of evidence and
of the road which the mind travels in order to achieve reliable
beliefs; and Dewey has not hesitated to acknowledge his profound
indebtedness to most of them. But for various reasons they suffer
from limitations which make them inadequate as accounts of the
subject with which they presumably are concerned— either because

7. Ibid^ p. i5<S.

[ 136 ] Sovereign Reason

they are based on a sensationalistic, pre-Darwinian psychology;
or because they show insufficient understanding of the role of
mathematical and experimental techniques; or because the full
significance for logic of scientific advances was not apparent at
the time they were written, or because, finally, since they were
undertaken with a frequently avowed philosophical arriere-pensee^
they failed to appraise and integrate logical principles in terms of
meanings assigned to them on the basis of their identifiable func-
tions in recognizable contexts of inquiry. But in any case, something
has been learned since then about the subject-matter of logical
theory; and every age must rewrite its logic as it does its history.
There is, indeed, already a sense in which Dewey’s own work
is outmoded. For some of his analyses are directed upon issues which
dominated thinkers of the precedmg century— problems which,
though intelligible enough in terms of the scientific, religious, and
social conceptions then current, have lost much of their meaning
and relevance for the contemporary reader. It is doubtless important
to realize that man is an animal and that his rational powers are
extensions of more rudimentary biological functions. But the mod-
ern reader will be willing to take that for granted, and he will sus-
pect the generalized reconstructions of this genesis which are not
based upon specific experimental findings, and which, even if co-
herent and cogent, leave him not one whit wiser as to the detailed
mechanisms involved. It is illuminating to be told that experience is
not constructed out of atomic sensations, and that the inquiring mind
is not simply the passive recipient of external stimuli. But many
contemporaries have learned that lesson, and they are eager for
new ones. They are impressed as weU as puzzled by the compli-
cated theories of modem physical science as well as by the difficul-
ties of social science and politics; and they are eager to master a
technique which could unravel for them the detailed logical struc-
ture of assumptions and procedures upon which these theories rest,
and to see the method of intelligence at work in concrete applica-
tions. To such readers, at any rate, Dewey does not supply all they
are looking for in a logical theory, though he does supply them with
an integral vision of the work to be done and of the conditions
under which it is to be carried on. The Dewey they find inspiring
and rewarding is the Dewey who has insisted, by precept and
example, that a contextual (or functional, or operational) analysis

Dewey^s Reconstructiofi of Logical Theory [ 137 ]

of concepts and principles is the only illuminating and adequate
one. On this central issue Dewey has set for them a standard toward
which to strive, not only in various details of his specific logical
analyses, but m a half a dozen other fields as well: in his clarifying
discussions of the reflex-arc concept, of corporate personality, of
the public, of the relation between the fine and useful arts, of
means and ends, and of freedom and democracy, to cite only a
few examples.

It is also only just to add that Dewey has contributed next to
nothing to the important recent literature concerned with the con-
ditions of formal validity or with the techniques for developing the
implications, the inter-relations, and the consistency of formal sys-
tems. Indeed, a strikingly large proportion of his logical writings
consists of sharp polemics against those whom he calls “formalists.^’
Though he is often just in his remarks upon the less cautious expres-
sions of the achievements of modem symbolic logic (and especially
upon the dubious epistemological use and foundation that Russell
has given them), it is frequently difiicult to resist the conviction
that he has underestimated the significance for his own conception
of logical theory of these achievements, or that he has been unwit-
tingly flogging a dead horse. He has himself stated that his own
development “has been controlled largely by a struggle between a
native inclination toward the schematic and formally logical, and
those incidents of personal experience that compelled me to take
account of actual material.”® However this may be, it is a matter
for genuine regret that such a considerable part of his logical recon-
struction has been carried on without the aid of the rigorous formal
techniques now in existence, or without a more circumspect and pre-
cise formulation of the distinctions required by his theory which
those techniques might have enabled him to give.

But although much of Dewey’s writing is controversial— directed
against almost all historical and contemporary schools of thought—
his use of the polemic illustrates that socialized, cooperative method
of science for which he is a spokesman and a pleader. For he has
been willing to leam from the subject-matter under discussion as
well as from the reflections of others; and his polemic, introduced
in the midst of first-hand reports on phases of scientific method,
aims to bring into focus just what the issues are for which he is

8. Contemporary American Philosophy, VoL U, p, 16-

[ 138 ] Sovereign Reason

contending and just what are the limitations of alternative ap-
proaches as he understand^ them. In any case, there are few writ-
ings in philosophy which represent as brilliant an intellectual per-
formance as the final chapter of his Logic^ in which he exhibits
different types of logical theories as emphasizing some essential
phase of inquiry to the exclusion of other phases— with the conse-
quence that, while judged to be inadequate as a coherent account
of its subject-matter, the reasons for the plausibility of each theory
are accounted for. Reference to the subject-matter of logical theory
must obviously be the final basis for evaluating the adequacy of
Dewey’s own theory. But such an evaluation can be made, as the
evaluations of theories in the natural and social sciences are made,
only by considering theories alternative to his, and by comparing
the relative success with which the available theories have been able
to incorporate systematically the rich subject-matter of logic.

This is not the appropriate occasion for a detailed examination of
Dewey’s reconstruction of logical theory. But it is proper to point
out that to some of his readers many of his central technical dis-
tinctions are extremely vague if not ambiguous, so that it is fre-
quently impossible to discover their precise import. He has attempted
a generalized account of the pattern and operations of inquiry; and
he has unquestionably been successful in formulating the common
structure of operations that are identifiably similar, despite their
occurrence in specifically different investigations. Nevertheless, his
general formulas sometimes cover structurally distinct operations,
which can be identified as similar only on the basis of hopelessly
vague analogies. A theory which is so general that it takes no note
of commonly recognized distinctions is always in danger of lapsing
into a tautology. Has not Dewey only himself to blame, for ex-
ample, for the frequent charge of anti-intellectualism and crude
utilitarianism levelled against him because of his claim that every
inquiry must have “practical” consequences and must employ “prac-
tical” means of control? For he has obscured some essential differ-
ences by using the term “practice” so broadly that it comprehends
not only the operations of industry and the arts, but also the purely
symbolic operations such as occur in mathematics. How much ink
and misunderstanding would have been saved if Dewey had stated
unambiguously what precisely he understood by “object of knowl-
edge,” and what, for example, he took to be the status with respect

Dewey^s Reconstruction of Logical Theory [ i39 ]

to knowledge of objects and events which can not be physically
transformed by the operations of inquiry. Many of Dewey’s con-
tentions turn out to be truistic and not worth fighting about, once
they are formulated with care. But words having a familiar meaning
cannot be given an unusual one without risk of confusing their
readers, unless precise rules are supplied for their application.

Dewey has expressed great hopes for the development of the
social sciences if antiquated logical conceptions are replaced by those
conforming to the requirements of modem scientific method. How-
ever, not aU of his readers can share his youthful optimism on this
point, since to many of them an adequate theory of inquiry is
neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for the advancement
of a science. Dewey has himself pointed out the remarkable achieve-
ments of the founders of modern physical science, in spite of their
inadequate conception of the logic of their procedure. The intent
of this comment is certainly not that of objecting to Dewey’s aim
to extend scientific attitudes and critical habits of mind into do-
mains usually dominated by ignorance and dogmatism. The question
that is being raised is to ask what we may reasonably expect from
a logical theory.

Dewey has sometimes conceived his logical theory as a logic of
discovery, as distinct from a logic of exposition or of the transmis-
sion of already acquired knowledge. There can be no question that
he has contributed something other than the latter type of logical
theory. On the other hand, the phrase ‘^logic of discovery” has too
many misleading overtones of meaning to allow it to serve as a
satisfactory characterization of what he has achieved. Of one thing,
however, there is no doubt— his logical theory does offer us illu-
minating principles of criticism and evaluation, it does provide us
with intellectual tools with the help of which choices and decisions
can be made more rational by making them less arbitrary, and it
does impress upon us the moral significance of being intelligent.
Diderot at the court of Catherine the Great is reputed to have
become disconcerted when the mathematician Euler announced to
him: plus b raised to the T^th power is equal to x\ therefore God

exists.” Like Diderot, we may not always be in the position to locate
the flaw in the argument, and may become disconcerted; but like
him, we may decide it is the greater part of wisdom to refuse to
be fooled. Dewey has helped the present generation not to be

[ 140 ] Sovereign Reason

readily fooled, and to distinguish genuine knowledge from pseudo-
science. And in doing that he has helped us to become intelligent
and to cast off the bonds of slavery to superstition and blind habits
of mind. His own life and work exemplify the truth of his dictum:
“All intelligent thinking means an increment of freedom of action
—an emancipation from chance and fatality.”

8

Reflections on Some Logical and
Metaphysical Themes in
Dewey's Philosophy

1 . SOME LEADING PRINCIPLES OF

PROFESSOR DEWEY’S LOGICAL THEORY

Th> CONCEPTION OF LOGIC which ProfcssoT Dewey has been pro-
posing since the turn of the century is by now so famiKar that it
would be pointless to restate it in detail in this review of his latest
formulation of it.^ But no careful reader of this treatise, however
faithfully he may have followed Professor Dewey’s writings, can
fail to be stirred by the energy with which it recaptures the splen-
did ideal of logic as an organon for the effective conduct of inquiry;
nor can he help being impressed by the bold power with which it
re-interprets, on the basis of the dominant idea of inquiry as a
mediatory process with logical principles as its tools, the themes
of traditional logic and epistemology and the diversely oriented
analyses of contemporary thinkers. Professor Dewey’s previous con-
tributions to logical theory, scattered through a score of books, now

I. Logic: The Theory^ of Inqmry. John Dewey. New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 193 S. vm + 54<5 pp. $3xx).

[ 141]

[ 142 ] Sovereign Reason

fall into a more definite pattern than before, with the consequence
that the grounds of his dissent from, as well as of his dependence
upon, traditional and contemporary schools are made more evident.

On the other hand, this volume also makes clear that Professor
Dewey has not ceased to look upon his logical theory as a hypoth-
esis, the detailed confirmation of which would have to be supphed
by others in the future. His attention remains focussed primarily
on the larger context within which logical principles operate, and
in which they obtain a significance as something more than elements
in a self-contained mathematical system; and even in this most com-
plete formulation of his theory, the various functions which the
principles of formal logic have as tools of inquiry are sketched with
only enough detail to supply suggestive programs for further ex-
ploration. In consequence, the book oifers a general underlying
conception of logic with which many students will enthusiastically
concur, while at the same time leaving them puzzled at or at issue
with many of its special analyses. Professor Dewey explicitly recog-
nizes the programmatic character of his reconstruction of logical
theory, and like Peirce whom he admires he regards claims to final-
ity as blocking the road to inquiry; accordingly, his inquiry into
inquiry must be taken to mark only the beginmng of a large project
of continued research.

Professor Dewey is a naturalist in philosophy, and he writes of
logical forms and principles as would a naturalist in the familiar bio-
logical sense of the word. His treatise is a study of the morphology
pf inquiry, and it aims to exhibit, as a biologist might in connection
with various forms and organs of life, the conditions under which
logical forms occur and are developed, their specific functions,
their dependence upon and their transformation of their environ-
ment, and their own interrelations on the basis of their contribu-
tions to the achievement of their objectives.

But Professor Dewey is not just a classificatory naturalist. His
examination of logical principles is carried through in terms of an
inclusive theory, according to which subject-matter acquires logical
traits on being subjected to the diifferential physical transformations
of inquiry, in consequence, logical principles are taken to formu-
late the empirically ascertained conditions which must be instituted
if inquiry is to have a successful termination. This cardinal thesis
has the force of a paradox, only as long as the methods and conclu-

Themes in Dewey^s Philosophy [ H3 1

sions of inquiry are isolated from the contexts in which they operate
and emerge by being examined solely on the basis of their finished
formulations. The thesis is further clarified if it is noted that in
Professor Dewey’s usage the phrase “logical form” stands for the
way in which selected features of a situation in which inquiry
occurs function in it, while the phrase “logical principles” denotes
a mode of operation— md not, as is sometimes the case among stu-
dents of formal validity, for quasi-grammatical forms and rules.
Just as plants and animals are studied to the best advantage only
within their natural environment so that the distinguishing traits
and uses of their various organs may be ascertained, so on Professor
Dewey’s view the specific techniques and principles of logic receive
an adequate theoretical interpretation only by being exhibited in
the roles they play within the process of inquiry.

A variant of this general principle of contextual analysis controls
all of Professor Dewey’s writings: it requires that process and prod-
uct be taken as correlative distinctions, so that neither can be under-
stood or assigned a status in existence independently of the other.
Thus, an effective use is made of this principle in Professor Dewey’s
discussion of ethical issues when he maintains that the character of
means employed enters constitutively into the character of ends
attained. Its special application to logical theory stipulates that the
conclusions of inquiry must be construed in terms of the procedures
used to establish them, and that objects of knowledge, conceived as
products of inquiry, can not be assigned an existence antecedently
to it.

This is not a suitable occasion for marshalling evidence for the
principle as a sound precept of analysis; but in any case, the ap-
parently paradoxical features of Professor Dewey’s logical theory
follow from his wholehearted acceptance of it. Consider, for ex-
ample, his well-known thesis that the objects of knowledge do not
have an existence antecedent to inquiry. It depends on the manifestly
empirical claim, which must be decided on matter-of-fact grounds,
that inquiry involves a physical reconstitution of its environing
situation before the latter can function as an object of knowledge.
But if this claim is warranted, then it does follow with the help of
the above principle that objects of knowledge can not be intelli-
gibly assigned an existential status prior to and in independence of
specific inquiries.

[ 144 ] Sovereign Reason

Professor Dewey’s refusal to read the conclusions of science ex-
cept in terms of the operations of inquiry, as well as his interpreta-
tion of logical principles as rules for the conduct of inquiry rather
than as formulations of ontological invariants, have brought forth
the accusation that his philosophy confounds questions of validity
and logical order with questions of origin and development. There
is perhaps only a hair-line which divides a sound application of the
principle of contextual analysis from a commission of the genetic
fallacy; but it does not seem to me that Professor Dewey has stum-
bled across it into forbidden territory. He has simply applied to
matters of logic the sort of analysis prized highly in the sciences.
Thus, competent students would dismiss as thoroughly incompe-
tent any proposal to assign meanings to such propositions as that
light is corpuscular or that space is curved, which neglects the com-
plicated symbolic transformations needed before such statements
can be given existential reference, or which fails to note the tech-
nological apparatus required in order to implement them with a
physical sense. Refusal to heed such proposals illustrates not the
genetic fallacy but scientific caution and wisdom. Professor Dewey’s
similar insistence that logical principles be construed in terms of
the relatively stable use that is made of them in inquiry is Kkewise
free from the fallacy; for his insistence arises from a refusal to
conceive principles as if their sole identifiable habitat were textbooks
and treatises, and from a conviction that it is their function in in-
quiry which exhibits their sole meaning and relevance. There is
clearly a difference between confusing questions of origin and
validity, and assigning a meaning and a degree of adequacy to prop-
ositions wholly on the basis of the circumstances of their use.

In this brief appraisal of Professor Dewey’s Logic it is not possible
to examine the details of his reconstruction of the theory of in-
quiry. There is one special point, however, which seems to me
worth while raising. The central technical innovation of his theory
is the interpretation of judgment as the settlement of an issue, so
that a judgment involves the functional correlation of perceptual
and conceptual material; and in elaborating this notion he intro-
duces a set of parallel distinctions, of which the most important is
the difference between generic and universal propositions. The
intent of the parallel terms is to demarcate the r 61 es of perceptual
and ideational material in inquiry, and Professor Dewey’s explicit

Themes in Denjoey^s Philosophy [ 145 ]

criticism of other writers on logic frequently takes the form that
they have confounded them. Generic propositions, in brief, are said
to have existential import referring to spatio-temporal connections
between existents, and to be contingent even though warranted by
inquiry, universal propositions express necessary relations between
characters or possibilities, and may be valid even if no things exist
with the required traits. For example, Professor Dewey declares
that “All men are mortal” is generic, if it means that all men have
died or will die; but that it is universal if it means that if anything
is human then it is mortal—that is to say, if it asserts a necessary rela-
tion between the characters of being human and being mortal (pp.
256ff.).

The first point to observe about this distinction is that it can not
be read off from the linguistic form of statements alone and that
it refers to a difference of function in inquiry. Generic propositions
are thus employed to identify and isolate perceptual material, and
to prepare it as evidence for or against a proposed solution of the
issue at hand; universal function as statements of possible operations
and their consequences, to be instituted in the interest of solving
the problem (p. 274). It is therefore confusing to have Professor
Dewey himself offer certain propositions as categorically iUustrat-
ing one or the other of these propositional forms, for example, the
Newtonian formula for gravitation as a universal proposition. If
the form of a proposition is its function, is he faithful to his general
standpoint in citing such formulae, taken out of their specific con-
texts, as examples for his distinctions? Could not inquiries be found
in which this formula helps to prepare existential material in order
to identify it for the sake of other operations to be performed? But
in the second place, the reader is left to wonder just what is the
force of “necessary” in the account of universals as involving neces--
sary relations between characters. Professor Dewey’s statement of
his distinction, and his occasional illustrations of it, invite the iden-
tification of generic propositions with what in current literature
are called synthetic ones, and of universal propositions with analytic
ones; and some of his readers have already succumbed to the tempta-
tion to interpret the distinction in such an unambiguous way. Such
an identification, however, simply will not do, in spite of Professor
Dewey’s occasional references to universal propositions as definitory
in nature (e.g., p. 272). For he explicitly declares that univemb

[ 146 ] Sovereign Reason

formtilate possible modes of acting, so that the execution of the
operation prescribed by the proposition also tests its force and
relevance for solving the problem at hand. But no analytic propo-
sition, in the contemporary technical sense, would be tested m the
way frequently proposed by Professor Dewey for his universals
(cf. p. 264). Moreover, he distinguishes between two sorts of uni-
versal propositions, one kind being exemplified by propositions of
mathematical physics (e.g., Newton’s law of gravitation), and the
other by propositions of mathematics (e.g., two plus two equals
four); and he recognizes that the former kind do not exhaust the
possibilities, so that they may have to be abandoned under the stress
of factual demands, while the latter are apparently free from such
limitations (p. 398). This subsidiary distinction only aggravates the
puzzle as to what is to be understood by the specification that uni-
versals assert necessary relations between characters. It follows that
the whole basis of his distinction between them and generic propo-
sitions remains obscure, while at the same time the grounds for his
criticism of those logicians whom he calls “formalists” are not ob-
viously relevant. Could he not be persuaded to restate the matter
with greater clarity and fullness?

In so far as I understand the distinction between generic and
universal propositions, it does not seem to me to be a sharp one,
though it calls attention to important stages in the continuum of
inquiry. Certain propositions, suggested but not derived from em-
pirical material, may be asserted with confidence because the con-
ditions for warranted assertions have been approximated for them.
These propositions do not enter integrally into the theoretical
framework of science, and their correction or even total abandon-
ment does not involve a radical recasting of that framework; such
propositions, I am suggesting, may be Professor Dewey’s generic
ones. On the other hand, some propositions gradually acquire such
a commanding position in the set of warranted assertions of the
period (in terms of comprehensiveness and deductive power), that
they reach the status of leading principles of empirical analysis and
in large measure control the general direction of research in the
science of which they are a part. These propositions are not easily
challenged fay the facts of experience, not because they have no
significant alternatives, but because to challenge them would involve
a fundamental overhauling of the theoretical systems of science; they

Themes tn De^ey^s Philosophy [ i47 1

thus function as assured procedural principles, no longer at the
mercy of random experiments because smtable devices are provided
for obviating apparent contradictions with experience without im-
pairing their fruitfulness as gmdes to further inquiry. Such propo-
sitions seems to me to fall into Professor Dewey’s first kind of
umversals. But the propositions of mathematics differ radically from
those just mentioned. They are analytic, and though also instru-
mental in inquiry are instrumental in a different way. For their
function is to make transitions in discourse, to facilitate calcula-
tions of various sorts, rather than to direct the analysis of empirical
material or to formulate possible modes of action. The recognition
of these distinctions seems to me fundamental for an adequate theory
of inquiry; but while Professor Dewey does not overlook them, his
discussions of them and of related topics do not constitute the most
enlightening portions of his treatise.

In spite of its limitations as to details, no half-way sympathetic
reader of this book can lay it down without the conviction that it
offers a conception of logic which has its roots firmly attached to
the procedures of science, and that its integral view of the subject
ranks among the great visions of the day. Those who read it must
acquire courage and inspiration to contribute their share toward
completing the fundamental task which Professor Dewey has en-
visaged with such startling clarity and adequacy.

2 PROFESSOR DEWEY’S ANALYSIS OF INDIVIDUALITY

Professor Dewey’s address on “Time and Individuality”- argues
the general thesis that the mark of individuality is development,
and that “temporal seriality is the very essence of the human indi-
vidual.” Moreover, in opposition to the view that sequential change
is foreign to the nature of inanimate things, he maintains that “the
principle of a developing career applies to all tilings in nature.”
Two corollaries are drawn from this metaphysical doctrine. The
first is that progress is not inevitable, but is contingent on the efforts
of men to control change in a given direction, consequently, the
ground of democratic ideas and practices must be a faith in the

2. Time and Its Mysteries, Senes 11 . Four Lectures given on the James
Arthur Foundanon, New York University, by Daniel Webster Hering, Wil-
liam Francis Gray Swann, John Dewey, and Arthur H. Compton, New
York. New York University Press. London. Humphrey Milford. Oxford
University Press. 1940. viii -f 137 pp. $2jx>.

[ 148 ] Sovereign Reason

potentialities of individuals. The second is that art complements
science in bemg a manifestation of individuality as creative of the
future; hence, since "‘the free mdividuality which is the source of
art is also the final source of creative development in time,” the
regimentation of artists is treason to the better future which such
regimentation would serve.

Professor Dewey’s essay is provocative, but his argument is puz-
zling. He rests his case concerning the universal validity of the
“principle of a developing career” on two main contentions. The
fibrst is that ""scientific objects” are purely relational, so that the
method of physical science is concerned with the measurement of
change and ‘"not with individuals as such”; the second is that it is
becoming clear that in physics “statements of what actually occurs
are statistical in character as distinct from so-called dynamical laws
that are abstract in character, and disguised definitions.” Professor
Dewey seems to me correct in his characterization of scientific
objects. But is it really the case that the methods of the natural
sciences are not concerned with “individuals as such”.^ Do we not
have reliable physical knowledge concerning such manifest indi-
viduals as the sun, the earth, and even individual human beings.^ The
second contention appears to me even more dubious. I will not stop
to argue the question whether the theories and laws of mechanics,
classical thermodynamics, relativity theory, and a good part of
optics and electrodynamics are in fact statistical laws, and if not
whether they are disguised definitions. I do not think that the
answer is afiirmative in either case. The crucial question is whether,
even if the statements of physics are statistical in character, it fol-
lows that development characterizes all things in nature. It does
not seem to me that this consequence can be validly drawn; for
there is no contradiction in using both a statistical and a non-statisti-
cal (“dynamic”) theory for the same subject-matter, as is evident
from the fact that both statistical mechanics and thermodynamics
can be employed in the domain of thermal phenomena.

Professor Dewey also appeals to the Heisenberg indeterminacy
relation as evidence for that fact that “the individual is a tempord
career whose future can not be logically deduced from its past,”
so that “for physical individuals time is not simply a measure of
predetermined changes in mutual positions, but is something that
enters into their being.” Waiving the question whether the pro-

Themes in Dewey^s Philosophy [ 149 ]

posed interpretation of the Heisenberg principle is adequate, it is
amusing to find Professor Dewey denying that science is concerned
with the intrinsic natures of things while at the same time he makes
statements which do just that. Moreover, while the predictions of
science are only probable, as Professor Dewey rightly maintains,
this fact is not a specific outcome of the Heisenberg principle; for
it is justifiable to assert that fact even for the classical dynamical
theories, so long as those theories have an empirical content and are
not “disguised definitions.” It is not clear, therefore, what relevance
the Heisenberg principle has for Professor Dewey’s argument.

Professor Dewey maintains that a thing’s potentialities are not
fixed and intrinsic to it, but depend on the consequences of its
interactions with other things. It is somewhat strange, however, to
find him also maintaining that the validity of this doctrine is essen-
tially related to a view which regards the “spatial rearrangement of
what existed previously” as in some sense an inferior manifestation
of development than a “qualitatively new” happening. For since
we can not tell what the character of physical theories will be like
after another hundred years of research, this seems like giving need-
less hostages to the future. But what I find really strange, in the
light of Professor Dewey’s main thesis, is to have him declare that
an individual can lose his individuality by becoming imprisoned in
routine, that “our behavior becomes predictable because it is but
an external rearrangement of what went before,” and that the human
problem is the control of change in a given direction. Since this
problem, if it is to be solved, presumably involves making predic-
tions concerning the future on the strength of past behaviors, these
various doctrines do not seem to me compatible. I do not think,
therefore, that the metaphysical underpinning Professor Dewey sup-
plies for his democratic faith is an adequate or, for that matter, a
needful structure. And I think that in attempting to supply it in
the manner of the present essay he has not been faithful to his own
best teachings.

9

Alfred North Whitehead

I.

One of the dominant ideals of western philosophy has been
the constmction of a coherent, logically related system of ideas in
terms of which every phase of existence can be interpreted. No
philosopher in recent decades has pursued this ideal with such dis-
tinction as has Alfred North Whitehead, who died at the age of
S6 on December 30, 1947. Most of the great philosophical systems
of the past were developed by men intimately familiar with the
sciences of their day; and in this respect also, unlike most contempo-
rary metaphysicians, Whitehead falls within the great tradition.
Indeed, it was not as a speculative metaphysician that he first
achieved eminence. His Universal Algebra and the Principia Mathe--
matica (written in collaboration with Bertrand Russell) are con-
tributions of classic importance to mathematics and logic; and his
subsequent analyses of the foundations of mathematical physics have
been judged as constituting a prolegomena to every future philos-

[ ^50]

Alfred North Whitehead [ 151 ]

ophy of science. It is a moot question whether Whitehead’s perma-
nent place in the history of thought is made more secure by his
scientific attainments or by his essays into philosophical cosmology.
But in any event, the essential features of his philosophy of organ-
ism are famihar to an audience not confined to his professional
colleagues, and his system continues to influence the thinking of
men in many different occupations. This unusual spectacle of a
difficult philosopher with a wide circle of lay readers cannot be
explained entirely in terms of Whitehead’s scientific prestige, nor
in terms of the grace and frequent brilhance of his prose, nor in
terms of the sheer delight that his suggestive play of ideas evokes.
His philosophical writings express some of the dynamic tensions
of the society in which he lived, and they answer needs that are
deep-seated and widely felt.

Philosophy may begin in wonder, but the wonder that rouses
philosophical reflection must contain a large admixture of puzzle-
ment. The puzzle controlling much of Whitehead’s thought is
produced by the apparent incongruity between the world encoun-
tered in immediate experience and the world allegedy disclosed by
modem natural science. The familiar world of everyday experience
is a continuum of sensuous qualities, and contains events and proc-
cesses that are permeated with emotional and purposive values. On
the other hand, the world as envisaged by an influential interpreta-
tion of classical physics consists of isolated bits of matter, shorn
of all sensuous glory and stripped of any inherent direction or
value. The latter world thus seems utterly alien to human experi-
ence; and if science renders a true account of the nature of things,
it becomes difficult to accept the human scene as anything but
an insubstantial appearance But a conception of reality according
to which the traits of things most prized by men have no genuine
place in it, converts human aspirations into a mockery; and worse
still, it transforms the obvious efficacy of human actions into an
unintelligible mystery.

It is one of Whitehead’s signal achievements to have recognized
that the radical bifurcation of man and nature, associated with what
he called “scientific materiahsm,” is not necessitated by physical
science. He was able to show that the concepts of physics, far from
describing a “real world” with which the genuine reality of things
apprehended in immediate experience is incompatible, are abstrac-

[ 152 ] Sovereign Reason

tions referring to qualities and processes discernible in such experi-
ence. The task that Whitehead envisioned for philosophy was
therefore that of supplying a critique of abstractions— a critique
which would exhibit the derivation and the specific functions of
abstractions in a world that contains much more than the skeletal
patterns of change made explicit by natural science. But he not
only proposed this task. He also developed a powerful intellectual
technique for carrying it out, and used it to illumine the significance
of a number of basic scientific concepts. Those who read with
excitement his Principles of Natural Knowledge, Concept of Nature,
and The Principle of Relativity when they appeared shortly after
the First World War, will scarcely forget the great hope these books
inspired. They were a promise of a comprehensive philosophy that
could take physics seriously for its disclosures concerning the execu-
tive order of nature, and that could at the same time recognize as
irreducible factors in the scheme of things the qualities and pur-
posive activities manifested to human experience.

The books Whitehead published after he joined the Harvard
faculty in 1924— especially Science and the Modern World, Process
and Reality, and Adventures of Zim—continued the critique of
abstractions he had begun so impressively. But they contmued the
critique in terms of conceptions cosmic in scope, rather than by
exhibiting the import of abstractions in terms of their specific
functions. He now presented a comprehensive vision of the universe
that appeared to integrate and illuminate an endless variety of
events and processes. However, while the earlier analysis showed
that the “senseless, valueless, purposeless” universe of scientific
materialism is a consequence of the fallacy of misplaced concrete-
ness, of mistaking the abstract for the concrete, Whitehead now
maintained that nature can be made intelligible only if everything
actual is assumed to have the traits generic to living organisms.
Everything actual, according to this later doctrine, exhibits “feel-
ing,” everything actual manifests a selective activity akin to “pur-
pose,” everything actual is related essentially and “organically” to
everything else. If the universe thus portrayed no longer seems alien
to human aspirations, it is because the features nature displays in all
her sectors are strictly analogous to features displayed by the human
organism. Indeed, moral and aesthetic beauty is now claimed to be
the “aim” of all existence, and not merely an occasional achieve-

Alfred North Whitehead [ i53 ]

ment in the human arena of the cosmos. Whitehead’s culminating
philosophy, hke that of Plato, is thus an attempt to combine an
interpretation of the universe that is both rationalistic and rehgious
—the rationalism conceived as the faith that at the base of things
there is no mere arbitrary mystery, the religion freed from super-
stition and institutionalized dogma. It is scarcely surprising that
those seeking new foundations for ancient faiths, or rebelling against
the discipline imposed by modern science on romantic speculation,
have found in the philosophy of organism an answer to their needs.
On the other hand, Whitehead’s cosmology is a celebration of
process and creative advance toward novelty as ultimate and per-
vasive traits of nature, and his system provides a fresh alternative
to the parochial negations of many traditional patterns of thought.
He was in fact sensitive as few technical plnlosophers have been
to the movement of things and ideas, and to the subtleties and com-
plexities of experience. The burden of much of his cosmic vision
IS carried by his aphoristic observ^ation that “Life is an offensive,
directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.” He
w^as an extraordinarily gifted spokesman, perceptive and wise, for
everything nascent, venturesome, and potentially liberating.

Whitehead’s philosophic cosmology is a vision that is articulated
with amazing virtuosity, but which rests less upon detailed argument
than upon direct insight. While much of it is inspired by a mathe-
matical conception of the universe, it also owes a heavy debt to
the romantic tradition; and for all its stress upon the importance
of time and the emergence of novelty, it has an obvious kinship with
the absolute idealism of Hegel. In the hands of a great thinker
disciplined by intimate contact with modern science, such as
Whitehead was, the cosmology can undoubtedly be used to shed
light on numerous basic problems. Nonetheless, it is at least an open
question whether the systematic use, by Whitehead or lesser men,
of its organismic categories as ultimate principles of interpretation
for everything whatsoever, yields illumination rather than obscurity.
To attribute “feeling” to whatever exists, to view all physical stresses
as “appetitions,” to see in the occurrence of any event the outcome
of a “decision” between alternatives— what is this but to describe
everything in nature in animistic terms, and to sanctify supersti-
tions from which men have only partly freed themselves? Is it
really clarifying and necessary, in order to find a place m the scheme

[154] Sovereign Reason

of things for the human scene^ to describe the cosmos as if one were
writing a general anthropology? Moreover, does one achieve either
knowledge or a better understanding of what is already known,
by simply giving new and potentially misleading names to already
discriminated elements of nature— for example, by^ labelling all
processes as having “aims’’? And if we admit, as perforce we must,
that no intellectual analysis, however thorough, can exhaust or
reproduce the passage of concrete events, is it either well-advised
or true to say that “Logic is a fake”? Such, at any rate, are some
of the doubts concerning Whitehead’s philosophic cosmology that
besiege many questioning minds. It is not Whitehead, the speculative
metaphysician, who has won the profound admiration of all his
readers. The excellence many of them cherish, is the excellence
found in Whitehead, the acute analyst, the steadfast critic of closed
systems and provincial dogmatisms, the incredibly sensitive com-
mentator on the diversity and the flux of existence.

2.

The pursuit of metaphysics as the study of generic characters of
existence has been slowly regaining its professional adherents. Once
its central theme, reaction to the unchecked flights of nineteenth
century romantic speculation has well nigh banished metaphysics
as a legitimate subject matter for philosophy. But the problems
which professional philosophers refused to consider became acutely
pressing in the special sciences. It was to be expected that ere long
comprehensive treatises on the nature of existence would appear,
fashioned by philosophers who were sensitive to the advances of
recent science as well as to the ancient tradition that philosophy
is the systematic study of being. To the series of distinguished essays
on metaphysics which contemporary philosophers have contributed,
these volumes^ are a notable addition.

Process and Reality , to which The function of Reason can
serve as an introduction or summary, should be doubly welcome.
In the fixst place, it is written by a man highly sensitive to the most
varied phases of human experience, and exceptionally competent to
write on some of them. Mathematics, physics, biology, art, religion,

I, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, by A, N. Whitehead.
(Mactnillan, 1929), $4.50.

The FimcUon of Reason, by A. N* Whitehead. (Princeton University Press,
1929), $1,50.

Alfred North Whitehead [ ^55 ]

are not alien to him, and in at least the first two disciplines White-
head is an acknowledged master. As a consequence, 'his volumes are
crammed full with insights and flashing phrases which illuminate
both text and subject matter as lightning does a stormy night. In
the second place, Whitehead’s approach to philosophic problems
has avoided traditional cliches. He has faced the issues of philosophy
with the conviction that not only must the characters which science
especially notes be taken as genuine traits of existence, but those
specific characters which eventuate when the rest of nature inter-
acts with the human organism must be so taken as well The traits
which appear in the segment of existence falling witliin human ex-
perience are taken by him as instances of, and continuous with,
analogous traits in the furthest reaches of nature. His metaphysics
consists, therefore, in the framing of categories adequate to describe
every phase of existence, but which are nevertheless such that any
characters whatsoever, subsumed under those categories, are shown
to be not different in kind, though different in degree of complexity,
from the characters manifested in human life. In this fashion does
Whitehead hope to demonstrate the unity of man and nature.

No summary less extended than the book itself can do justice to
the sweep and ingenuity of this cosmology, which requires one
Category of the Ultimate, eight Categories of Existence, twenty-
seven Categories of Explanation, and nine Categorial Obligations
for its framework. In essence, however, its doctrine is a variation on
the Platonic-Leibnizian theory of how a multiplicity of pure forms
or eternal objects are caught up by (ingress into) the flux of ac-
tuality. For like many other metaphysicians, Whitehead finds himself
in agreement with pre-Kantian fashions of thought even though he
started out in opposition to them. Temporal things arise by partici-
pation in eternal things. But in coming to be a determinate instance
of a pure form, a temporal thing reflects (prehends) the universe
of many disjoined actual occasions, so that its selective absorption
of the disjoined universe culminates in a novel and unified event,
which in turn contributes its share to (becomes objectified in) the
intrinsic natures of other actual occasions. Every actual entity must,
accordingly, be construed as dipolar. It is something physical, the
culmination of antecedent processes which emerge in it as a novel
synthesis and enjoy therein a specific physical immediacy, called
*‘feeling”; and it is also something restive or appetitive for eternal

[ 156 ] Sovereign Reason

objects as yet unrealized in the flux, thereby passing on from the
finality of its own eventuation to new moments of completed cre-
ation. “Some lowly, diffused form of the operations of Reason
constitutes the vast diffused counter-agency by which the material
umverse comes into being.” Consequently, every actual entity is
capable of two supplementary analyses: genetic analysis shows how
the entity has become what it is as the outcome of its prehending
the rest of the universe; morphologic analysis indicates the relations
of efficient causality which it bears to its contemporaries and suc-
cessors. The pervasive twofold character of an actual entity as
physical or final, and as mental or appetitive, is the prototype selected
by Whitehead in terms of which such relations as that of the mind
to its body can be rendered intelligible. The initial dualism of actual
entity and eternal object is mediated, however, as in Plato and
Leibniz, by a God. He has both a “primordial nature,” whereby the
barren pure forms are eternally and ideally realized in him, and
whereby he constitutes a principle of selectivity, so that the actual
process never fails to exhibit the principles of Whitehead’s meta-
physics by precipitating new eternal objects; and he has a “conse-
quent nature” wherein the mutual immediacy of whatever once is
actual is forever conserved. So this metaphysics ends in a Bradleyan
view of the universe: it is actualized in individual entities; but these
are nevertheless organically connected in the unity of God’s feehng
of their conjoint existence, as well as through the relevance to them
of every unactualized form ideally felt by God.

In spite of the speculative power of this cosmology, it will leave
some readers dissatisfied and censorious. This reviewer, at any rate,
must protest, in the first place, against the severe abuse of language
to which Whitehead is partial. Every attempt at precision in meta-
physics is praiseworthy. But when, instead of using newly coined
words or old words carefully redefined, he introduces words that
have an accepted meaning and an inevitable human association to
denote his own unusual categories, he invites confusion and ob-
scurantism.> Words like “feeling,” “satisfaction,” “decision,” “appe-
tition,” “society,” which have a vague enough accepted connotation,
can be employed only with danger as the equivalents, more or less,
of more neutral words like “immediacy,” “completion,” “selec-
tivity,” “incompleteness,” “structure.” For the ease with which the
former set of words become symbols for specifically human qualities,

Alfred North Whitehead [ ^57 ]

which are then read into every occurrence in nature, makes them
unfit for exact thought, especially when their meanings are loosely
stated. It is a strange irony that the co-author of Principia Mathe-
Tnatica should have at once so great a distrust of language that he
disowns it as adequate to express propositions, and yet so much
faith in a word like “feeling” that he uses it to connote indiscrimi-
nately the different types of immediacy which events possess. If
language does not “express” a proposition, what, one would like
to know, does? What is “expression” if language does not do it,
and what is a “proposition” if language does not adequately express
it? The program to construct a coherent, logical, and necessary
system of ideas, in terms of which every element of experience is to
be stated, is not far from sheer verbalism if, for example, every variety
of immediacy is subsumed under the label of “feelings,” and if
thereby the tenuous analogy between the feelings of human beings
and the specificity of any event is expanded into an identity of type.

Speculation, as Whitehead urges, is the life blood of science and
philosophy. But he also admits that it must not run wild. Unless the
speculative flight ends in theories which are directly or indirectly
verifiable in human experience, what differentiates a daring philoso-
phy from myth and superstition? Now what are the possible ways
of verifying Whitehead’s ubiquitous feelings, satisfactions, uncon-
scious prehensions, or his God’s patience, wisdom, consciousness,
and conservation of all values? Either these terms do not mean
what they ordinarily mean, and then this metaphysics must cer-
tainly be supplemented by more analytic studies; or the existence
of what they denote is not verifiable. Furthermore, when White-
head declares that by the “coherence” of ideas he understands that
no entity be conceivable in “complete abstraction” from the sys-
tem of the universe, one may retort that no relational way of
thought can declare itself otherwise. But one must also add, that
while there can be no “complete abstraction” in this sense, there
undoubtedly is a “relative abstraction” so that one must not
make the impossible demand that the nature of the whole universe
be presupposed in whatever we may say. Whitehead’s pursuit of
truth as “nothing else” than how the composite natures of actuali-
ties receive representations in God’s nature (p, i8), is fortunately
not his only occupation, otherwise the Umversal Algebra and the
Principia would never have been written. And when one reads.

[ 158 ] Sovereign Reason

further, that the “necessity’’ of a philosophic scheme must bear in
itself its own warrant of universahty (p. 5); or when a frequency
theory of probability is made to depend on an intuitive and infalhble
knowledge of “equal probabilities” (p. 307); the reader can only
gasp and wonder at the audacity of the mathematician who denies
the principles of the method of his own science when he turns
philosopher.

More serious difEculties in this scheme of ideas remain. This
cosmology is an explicit attempt to combine a pluralism of events,
an appreciation of their uniqueness and contingency, with an or-
ganic view of existence in which the “togetherness” of things is
facilitated by God’s non-temporal conceptual feeling of the realm
of pure forms. In so far as each thing is what it is in virtue of the
concrescent union in it of other things, existence is organically con-
nected and all relations are internal. Nevertheless, Whitehead recog-
nizes two types of prehensions, a positive kind, in which a “posi-
tive,” definite bond exists between every pair of items in the
universe, accompanied by a feeling of that bond; and a negative
kind, in which some items are excluded from contributing to the
subject’s constitution. All actual entities, but only a selection of
eternal objects, are felt by a given subject; nevertheless, even the
eternal objects not felt play a role, since negative prehensions too
have their immediate aspects, and the “negative prehension of an
entity is a positive fact with its subjective form” (p. 66). The
proverbial flea on the dog’s tail does add, apparently, to the actual
nature of the dog-star; for if it does not do so “positively,” the
exclusion of the flea from contributing to the internal constitution
of Sirius is nevertheless accompanied by an appropriate subjective
feeling all the same. The “organic” nature of existence is proved
because all things must be related, since if two things are not related
in a specific way, the non-relation is, after all, a relation of a kind!
All this may be true, but the conclusion that existence is organic is
won at the price of so far diluting the meaning of “organism” that
the application of the term to specific biological structures no longer
differentiates the latter from “inorganic” structures. Of what avail
to call the interrelation of the stars organic, if the kind of organiza-
tion the stars exhibit is poles apart from the organization of living
things?

Why anything should happen at all, why actual things should be

Alfred North Whitehead [ ^59 ]

“restless after novelty,” is a problem which no naturalistic philoso-
phy need face, since if it is faced it must be left unanswered, even if
it is left in the bosom of God. Whitehead’s philosophic writings
have been largely devoted to calling attention to this element of in-
eradicable freshness and unaccountability in every event, and he has
not hesitated finally to identify this creative urge with the divine
element in actuality. The price of novelty, however, is the passing
away of characters which antecedent events possessed, and the cre-
ative advance of nature is accompanied by the perishing of those
immediacies which have already emerged. On Whitehead’s theory
of God’s twofold nature it is difficult to see how creation does retain
its spontaneity, and how what is once actual does pass away. For
the primordial nature of God is his feeling the entire multiplicity of
eternal objects, so that by reason of God’s sharing in the nature
of actual entity, there results a gradation of the relevance of eternal
objects to the career of that entity. “Effective relevance requires
agency of comparison, and agency belongs exclusively to actual
occasions. This divine ordering is itself matter of fact, thereby con-
ditioning creativity. Thus possibility which transcends realized
temporal matter of fact has a real relevance to the creative advance”
(p. 46). That individuality and self determination which appeared
to be the contribution of every event to existence, seems here to be
derivative from the primordial nature of God which transcends the
given actual occasion. On the other hand, the consequent nature of
God provides for the objective immortality of every actual thing.
“In it there is no loss, no obstruction. The world is felt in a unison
of immediacy” (p. 524). God thus becomes the great companion,
the fellow sufferer who understands! But either the “unison of
immediacy” is a Pickwickian description of the posterity or causal
consequences of actual entities, or death and decay become illusions.

In Whitehead’s system, therefore, the possibilities into which
actual entities can develop are given once for all, and unlike Charles
Peirce’s cosmogenic growth of possibilities, novelty in actuality
must always come from “somewhere.” Whitehead’s conclusion is in
line, therefore, with the traditional philosophic and theologic sys-
tems. But one reader at least would like to know what is the literal
meaning of conceptual prehensions of eternal objects, if conscious-
ness is not necessary for such prehensions. One would like to know
on the basis of what evidence, or upon what interpretation, ap-

[ i6o ] Sovereign Reason

petition for an eternal object plays the role of final cause, efficacious
in the realization of detemndnate occasions. One would like to know
Whitehead’s detailed solution of the well known antinomies arising
from the notion of the class of abstracta (p. 73). One would like to
know what it means to say that “apart from the experiences of
subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness”
(p. 254), or that it is the appetition -for unrealized forms which is
the final cause of the temporal process One must ask whether the
characterization of process as an “influx” of eternal objects, or of
change as the description of the adventures of eternal objects in
actuahty, are really contributions to an understanding of change
and process. One suspects, therefore, that eternal objects, instead of
being regarded as the relational patterns invariant over segments of
existence, are uncritically hypostatized so that a God must be in-
voked to precipitate them back into the flux. And one suspects that
Whitehead has accomplished the resolution of the Cartesian prob-
lem of how the mind and body interact, only by raising the hopeless
question of how possibilities can be effective in regulating their
own realization.

10

The Philosophy
of Bertrand Russell

R^ussell’s writings on the philosophy of science exhibit one
persistent feature: his explicitly avowed use of the maxim ‘When-
ever possible, substitute constructions out of known entities for in-
ferences to unimown entities,”^ a maxim which elsew'here he calls
“the supreme maxim in scientific philosophizing.” Acting upon this
precept, he has attempted to show that the ostensible objects of
science are “logical fictions,” capable of definition in terms of ap-

I. Contemporary British Philosophy, First Senes, edited by J. H, Muirhead,
London and New York, 1925, p. 363. Subsequent references to this book wilt
be abbreviated to CBP.

In this essay the following abbreviations will be used for the titles of books
by Russell. FG for An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, Cambridge,
England, 1897, IMP for Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, London
and New York, 1920; P for Philosophy, New York, 1927, AM for The
Analysts of Matter, London, 1927; OKEW for Our Knowledge of the Ex-
ternal World, Second Edition, New York, 1929, PM for The Principles of
Mathematics, Second Edition, New York, 1938, ABC for The ABC of Rela-
tivity, London, 1925; and IMT for An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth,
New York, 1940.

[ ]

[162] Sovereign Reason

propriately selected elements. I wish in this essay to examine die
type of analysis which Russell has brought to bear upon the logical
problems of physics as a consequence of his adoption of this maxim.
However, Russell has repeatedly called attention to the fact that it
was the fruitfulness of certain logical techmques in the foundations
of mathematics which led ‘him to adopt the maxim as the supreme
guide in philosophy. I shall therefore briefly consider those tech-
niques, as they are employed in the context of Russell's reconstruc-
tion of pure mathematics, preliminary to the discussion of his
analysis of physics.

I.

I. Russell’s by now classic studies on the foundations of mathe-
matics brought to a conclusion what was, at the time of their pub-
lication, a revolution in traditional conceptions of mathematics. As
is well known, the explicit thesis for which those studies supply
overwhelming evidence is the essential identity of logic and pure
mathematics. In exhibiting that identity, Russell also establishes the
untenability of certain influential theories of knowledge which
were based upon historically widespread views as to the nature of
mathematics. For by clearly distinguishing between pure mathe-
matics, whose propositions contain only logical terms, and applied
mathematics, whose propositions contain descriptive (or empirical)
as well as logical terms, he cut the ground from under the claims of
dogmatic rationalism, Kantian apriorism, and types of sensational-
istic empiricism. On the other hand, Russell’s own analyses seemed
to require the adoption of an extreme form of Platonic realism, since
his detailed justification of mathematics as a body of valid proposi-
tions appeared to be cogent only on the hypothesis of the “inde-
pendent reality” of universals and relations. Indeed, it was in con-
siderable measure because of this supposed connection between such
a realism and Russell’s major thesis about mathematics, that the
logico-symbolic techniques he employed so brilliantly were believed
to require definite philosophical commitments, so that the use of
those techniques became the center of philosophic controversy.

Nevertheless, some of Russell’s most notable achievements in the
analysis of mathematical notions exemplified a tendency opposed
to Platonic realism. His analysis of the notion of cardinal number,
for example, showed that it was unnecessary to assume the “exist-

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell [ 163 ]

ence” (or “subsistence”) of a specific type of entity to correspond
to the notion; and, accordingly, he showed that, without affecting
the structure or validity of mathematics, the “ultimate population”
of Platonic objects may be supposed to be smaller than had been
thought.

In effecting such economies, Russell was in fact carrying on a
great tradition in mathematics. Thus, the “extension” of the number-
concept in the history of mathematics was first accompanied by the
postulation of special kinds of number (the rational fractions, the
signed numbers, the irrationals, the imaginaries, the infinitesimals,
and so on) to serve as the objects “discovered” by mathematicians.
But the subsequent work of such men as Hamilton, Von Staudt, and
Weierstrass made it evident that the postulation of such numbers
as distinctive sorts of entities was unnecessary, since the required
“entities” can all be defined in terms of famihar anthmetical notions
and operations. Accordingly, when Russell declared

Every one can see that a circle, being a closed curve, cannot get to
infinity. The metaphysician who should mvent anything so preposterous
as the circular points [at infinity], would be hooted from the field. But
the mathematician may steal the horse with impunity,^

and when, years later, commeilting on the mathematician’s occa-
sional practice of postulating what is required, he noted that “The
method of ‘postulating’ what we want has many advantages; they
are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil,”® he was
doing less than justice to the tendency which the history of mathe-
matics illustrates of eventually supplanting dubious “inferences” by
suitable “constructions.” Russell’s maxim of philosophizing simply
makes explicit a long-range trend of mathematical development.

2. For the sake of definiteness, the operation of Russell’s tech-
niques for avoiding needless postulations in mathematics will be
illustrated in three cases. First, the cardinal numbers. The cardinal
numbers are generally admitted to be predicable of classes, two
classes being assigned the same number when they are similar (i.e,,
when their members can be correlated in a one to one fashion). It
seems natural, therefore, to regard the cardinal number of a class
as the property which that class has in common wdth classes similar
to it; and, on this view, a cardinal number is sometimes said to be

2. FG, 45^,

3. IMP:, 71 •

[ 164 ] Sovereign Reason

obtained ‘‘by abstraction” from the classes possessing it. However,
there seems no good reason for supposing that similar classes have
just one property in common rather than a set of properties. There
is even room for doubt whether at least one such property “exists”;
for in assuming the existence of such a property we are assuming,
according to Russell, “a metaphysical entity about which we can
never feel sure that it exists or that we have tracked it down.”^ In
order to avoid these difficulties he therefore defined the number of
a class as the class whose members are classes similar to the given
class. Since it can be proved that there is only one such class of
classes, the first difficulty vanishes; and since this class possesses all
the formal characteristics expected of cardinal numbers, while at
the same time its existence is “indubitable,” it no longer is necessary
“to hunt for a problematic number which must always remain
elusive.”^

Consider next Russell’s definition of the real numbers, for example,
of the irrational number which is the square-root of two. It is well
known that the square-root of two is not an integer and that it
cannot be a rational number. What, then, is it? Prior to Russell’s
analysis it was customary to regard it as the limit of certain series of
rational numbers, or more generally, as a distinct kind of entity
whose “existence” was assumed for the sake of satisfying certain
mathematical relations. For example, the rational numbers, if or-
dered according to magnitude, form a series. In many cases this
series can be decomposed into two ordered classes, such that one
of the rational numbers separates their members; thus, the two
classes, rationals less than two-thirds and rationals greater than two-
thirds, are separated by the rational number two-thirds. On the
other hand, consider the two ordered classes of rationals, rational
numbers whose squares are less than two and rational numbers
whose squares are greater than two; in this case, no rational number
effects the separation. It again seems “natural” to suppose that there
must be a number, though not a rational one, which “lies between”
these two classes. But what cogent grounds have we for assuming
the “existence” of such a number? Russell argued that we have none,
and that it is only the influence of irrelevant spatial imagination or
the seductiveness of certain algebraic operations which lends an air

4. /MP, 18.

5. /MP, 18,

The Philosophy of Bertrafid Russell [^65]

of plausibility to such an assumption. The assertion of the “exist-
ence” of a new kind of number is thus an unwarranted “inference,”
and introduces something problematic and elusive into mathematics.
On the other hand, the existence of the class of rationals whose
squares are less than two is ?iot disputable, for this class is “con-
structed” out of “known” elements. Accordingly, since the mathe-
matical properties usually attributed to irrational numbers can be
shown to belong to that class, Russell defined the square-root of two
as identical with that class of rational numbers.

The notion of class plays a fundamental role in these two examples.
But, according to Russell, classes, like cardinal and real numbers,
are not part of “the ultimate furniture of the world” (since they
are neither “particulars” nor properties or relations of particulars),
and must thus be regarded as “logical constructions.” He therefore
required a definition of classes

which will assign a meaning to propositions in whose verbal or symbolic
expressions words or symbols apparently represting classes occur, but
which will assign a meaning that altogether eliminates all mention of
classes from a right analysis of such propositions. We shall then be
able to say that the symbols for classes are mere conveniences, not
representing objects called “classes,” and that classes are in fact . . .
logical fictions.®

Russell achieved his objective by devising as translations for state-
ments explicitly about classes other statements which mention only
certain properties possessed by the individuals that would ordinarily
be said to be members of those classes. Before illustrating Russell’s
procedure, a certain difficulty in effecting such translations must be
mentioned. A given property (e.g., being human) determines
uniquely just one class (i.e., the class of men); but the same class
will be determined by two or more non-identical properties, if
those properties are formally equivalent—that is, if every individual
which possesses one of the properties also possesses the other, and
conversely. Thus, the two non-identical properties of being human
and being a featherless biped determine the same class. Hence, in
order to effect the desired translation of a statement about a class,
some device must be introduced so that in the new statement no
one special property is mentioned tn exclusion of other properties
which also may determine the class in question. With this explana-

6. IMPy l8lf.

[ i66 ] Sovereign Reason

tion in mind, but omitting fine points, Russell’s general procedure
may be illustrated as follows. The statement “The class of points
in a plane is as numerous as the class of lines in a plane” is explicitly
about two classes, one of which is certainly determined by the
property of being a point in a plane and the other by the property
of being a line in a plane. The approximate translation proposed for
this statement is;

There exist at least two properties such that one of them is formally
equivalent to the property of being a point in a plane, the other is
formally equivalent to the property of bemg a line in a plane, and such
that for every individual which has the first property there is just one
individual with the second property, and conversely.

Although for the statement here chosen a somewhat simpler trans-
lation of the requisite kind can be given, the indicated translation
illustrates the sort of complexity which Russell believed is required
in general. In any event, the proposed translation makes no mention
of any classes; and, accordingly, the assumption that classes “exist”
as special kinds of entities is not required.

Let us finally state what appears to be the general pattern of the
procedure of substituting “constructions” for “inferences.” Let
“Si” be a statement, employed in some definite context Ti, which
contains explicitly the expression “C,” where this expression sym-
bolizes some entity C; that is to say, “Si” would normally be sup-
posed to be about C. Under what circumstances is C (the entity^
not the expression “C”) to be regarded as a “logical construction”
or “logical fiction?” Suppose there exist a set of entities ai, ^2,

. . . , and a set of relations jRi, R2» • * • ; suppose, further, that a
statement “S2” can be formed which contains mention of these
entities and relations but does not contain the expression “C”; and
suppose, finally, that in the context Ti the statement “S2” is logi-
cally equivalent to “Si.” If these conditions are satisfied, C is a
logical construction out of the specified entities and relations. It
will be noted that the above three examples conform to this schema-
tism. It is clear that the statement “S2” cannot, in general, be ob-
tained from “Si” by simply replacing “C” in the latter by a more
complex expression without altering the rest of “Si”; the formula-
tion of “S2” involves, in general, a radical recasting of “$i.”

3. A number of observations can now be made on Russell’s use
of his maxim of philosophizing in his reconstruction of mathematics.

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell [ 167 ]

Although Russell substitutes “constructions out of known entities
for inferences to unknown entities,” he can maintain an attitude of
theoretical neutrality with respect to the existence or non-existence
of such things as numbers and classes. As he himself says, “When
we refuse to assert the existence of classes we must not be supposed
to be asserting dogmatically that there are none. We are merely
agnostic as regards them: like Laplace, we can say, ^je n^ai pas
besoin de cette hypothese.'^ The maxim thus expresses a prin-
ciple of caution and economy, and the techniques which imple-
ment it cannot by themselves help to decide what “exists” and what
does not. Those techniques assume that certain entities and relations
are in some sense “given.”

It is well known, however, that in developing a mathematical
system there is usually considerable leeway as to what materials
may be taken as primitive and what is to be defined. From a formal
point of view, the characterization of something as a “construction”
must always be viewed as relative to the base selected. Accordingly,
it seems as correct to regard the cardinal numbers as priimtive (rela-
tive to a system, like Hilbert’s, in which certain concepts of logic
as well as of mathematics proper are taken as basic) as it is to re-
gard them as constructions (relative to a system, like Russell’s, in
which concepts of logic are the sole primitives). Which base is in
fact adopted will in general depend on matters that are not ex-
clusively logical: upon issues of technical efficiency, upon certain
more inclusive practical requirements, and often upon antecedent
commitments as to what is “metaphysically” or “epistemologically”
ultimate. From such a formal point of view, Russell’s reconstruc-
tion of mathematics is primarily the systematization of a large body
of propositions, in which remarkable economy is achieved in show-
ing the various relations of dependence between different portions
of mathematical doctrine; and Russell’s claim that the concepts and
propositions of general logic are sufficient for developing formally
the rest of mathematics is hardly debatable. But seen in this light,
his technique for avoiding needless postulations is simply one device
among others for attaining a maximum of inclusiveness and gener-
ality with a minimum of special assumptions. From this point of
view at least, the issue he frequently raises as to whether numbers

7. IMP , 184.

[ i68 ] Sovereign Reason

and classes “exist” in some ontological sense does not appear to be
relevant to the problem under consideration.

On the other hand, Russell’s reconstruction of mathematics may
also be viewed as an attempt to analyze mathematical notions so as
to exhibit their relevance to everyday affairs and science. It is this
point of view which is paramount when Russell declares that that
sort of definition of cardinal number is required which will make
possible the “interpretation” of statements like “There were twelve
Apostles” or “London has six million inhabitants.” And he maintains
that his logical definition of the cardinals “makes their connection
with the actual world of countable objects intelligible.”® Accord-
ingly, the fundamental issue which arises in this connection is
whether Russell’s analyses state what is “meant” by mathematical
expressions, not simply in the context of the formal development
of mathematics, but in the context of statements about the empirical
world; in other words, the issue is whether Russell’s analyses expli-
cate the use of mathematical expressions in the context of procedures
such as counting and measuring.

Unfortunately, Russell does not always keep this issue at the
center of his concern, and as a consequence it is often most puzzling
to know just what he is doing when he says that he is “defining”
the various concepts of mathematics. Thus, in commenting on the
definition of cardinal number which he and Frege developed, he
declares:

The real desideratum about such a definition of number is not that
it should represent as nearly as possible the ideas of those who have not
gone through the analysis required in order to reach a definition, but
Shat it should give us objects having the requisite properties. Numbers,
in fact, must satisfy the formulae of arithmetic, any indubitable set of
objects fulfilling this requirement may be called numbers.^

Russell is surely right in saying that a definition of number need not
reproduce the “ideas” of those who use numerical expressions,
since most people do not know how they use them. But it seems
to me a serious blunder to maintain that “any indubitable set of
objects” which satisfy the formulae of arithmetic may be called
numbers— if the business of “logically constructing” numbers is to
be something other than a purely formal exercise, and if the re-

8. FM, Introduction to the Second Edition, vi,

9. OKEW, 222.

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell [ 169 ]

sultant analyses are to express the way or ways in which ‘‘number”
is employed. From the point of view of the present approach, it is
important to bear in mind the observation that an analysis or “logi-
cal construction,” which is adequate for one context in which an
expression is used, is not necessanly adequate for another context,
and is unlikely to be adequate for all contexts. It does not follow,
therefore, that definitions of the various numbers which are suit-
able for developing mathematics formally and systematically are
suitable as analyses of them in other domains where they are used.

Two special difficulties which aggravate the analysis of mathe-
matical concepts are worth noting in this connection. In the first
place, many mathematical expressions are employed only within
some more or less formalized system of mathematical statements,
and have no clear or direct connections with statements which for-
mulate matters in the actual world. The use of such expressions
within the symbolic system may be governed by fairly explicit
rules of operation, although no interpretation for those expressions
may be feasible which would make the latter symbolical of any-
thing known to occur in any part of the environment. In other
words, such expressions may have an important function within
what may be called a “calculus,” without being “in themselves” in
any way “representative.” Many students (like Hilbert and Her-
mann Weyl) have accordingly eschewed the doubtless “natural”
desire to interpret them in terms of something familiar, and have
been content to exhibit the roles which specific calculi (containing
such expressions) play in the system of scientific formulations. In
any event, the interpretation of such expressions as denoting en-
tities, allegedly “constructed” out of “indubitable” elements, ap-
pears to be a gratituitous enterprise. The second difficulty is that in
actual practice many mathematical expressions have no precise use,
however precisely they may be defined in terms of the basic notions
of a formalized system. Analyses of what such expressions “mean,”
when such analyses yield something “constructed” in a precise way
out of definite things or operations, must therefore be viewed as
proposals as to how those expr^ons might be used. A proposal,
however, is not to be judged in terms of truth or falsity, but in
terms of its convenience and effectiveness in achieving specific ob-
jectives. And if Russell’s definitions are such proposals, as I think
some of them are, the issue he raises with respect to them, whether

[ 170 ] Sovereign Reason

the “entities” corresponding to them are “inferred” or “con-
structed,” does not appear to have much point.^^

One final observation. If an entity is a logical construction, then
a symbol representing that entity is theoretically capable of elimina-
tion from any statement in which that symbol occurs. It has already
been noted that, if an entity can be shown to be a logical construc-
tion, considerable economy can be effected in developing mathe-
matics. However, it is also worth noting that a gain in economy in
one detail may have to be bought at the price of complicating the
structure of mathematics in other details— perhaps even at the price
of requiring dubious assumptions concerning “the ultimate furniture
of the world.” Now in fact some of Russell’s definitions, when these
are taken as exhibitions of the structure of mathematical objects in
terms of “indubitable” elements of the “actual world,” do seem to
me to have this dubious character. If the “existence” of a real
number is doubtful when it is conceived as a special kind of thing,
is its “existence” better warranted when it is identified with an
infinite series of rationals? Again, Russell is not sure that classes
“exist.” But, in his translations of statements ostensibly about classes,
he does not hesitate to introduce existential quantifiers with respect
to properties—^ procedure which requires him to assume the exist-
ence of an indeterminate range of properties. Is this assumption,
construed in the “realistic” fashion that Russell adopts, so obvious
that it may safely be taken as a metaphysical foundation for mathe-
matics? I am not suggesting that Russell’s definitions are not ade-
quate for the purposes of systematizing formal mathematics; and
fortunately I am not required on this occasion to propose a more
satisfactory “metaphysics” for mathematics than his. I raise these
questions only to call attention to the complex issues which await

10. Whether Russell’s definitions of the various kinds of numbers do expli-
cate the use which is made of the latter m everyday affairs and science, is a
highly debatable question. I think that his definitions of the specific finite
cardinals do express satisfactorily at least part of what is involved in the use
of such statements as have ten fingers,” “There is only one even prime,”
or “New York is more than 200 nules from Boston,” although I am less
sure than he appears to be that certain ordinal notions are not involved m
that use, as Norman R. Campbell and Hermann Weyl have suggested. On the
other hand, I am quite unconvinced that Russell’s analysis of the irrationals
is the appropriate one for “interpreting” such statements as “The diagonal of
this square is equal to the square-root of two inches.” For, although in expli-
cating the sense of such a statement reference to a set of rational numbers is
required, I do not think that this reference is to an infifUte series of rationals.

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell [ 171 ]

us when we employ his supreme maxim of philosophizing in a
metaphysical rather than a methodological spirit.

2.

I. Russell’s concern with the positive sciences is dominated almost
exclusively by “the problem of the relation between the crude data
of sense and the space, time, and matter of mathematical physics.”^^
Like many of his contemporaries, he has been impressed by the
highly abstract character of physical theory, and by the prirm facie
difference between the manifest traits of the world which are ex-
hibited in our daily experience with it and its constitution as re-
ported by the theoretical sciences. The theories of classical physics
already provided ample materials for embroidering this difference;
those theories employed such notions as that of instantaneous veloci-
ties, point-particles, mathematically continuous motions, and per-
fectly rigid and elastic bodies, although there appears to be nothing
in our common experience to which these notions are applicable.
But it was the advent of relativity theory and quantum mechanics,
with their novel geometries and chronometries and their revolu-
tionary conceptions of matter and causality, which supplied the
chief stimulus to Russell’s preoccupation with the problem.

However, the “critique of abstractions’* for which the problem
apparently calls may take several different forms. Russell’s con-
ception of the task of such a critique is controlled entirely by his
view that the familiar concrete objects of daily life, no less than
the abstract and remote entities of theoretical physics, are logical
constructions. His approach to the problem must be clearly differ-
entiated from so-called “operational” or “functional” analyses of
scientific concepts— analyses which take “common-sense” knowl-
edge and “common-sense” objects for granted. Something must
therefore be said at the outset about the general pattern of Russell’s
views.

Like most philosophers, Russell believes that any discussion of
the relation between theoretical physics and experience starts with
admitting the familiar facts of common knowledge. But he maintains
that on the one hand this knowledge is vague, complex, and inexact,
and that on the other hand some types of its “data” are more certain
and more “indubitable” than others. In order to obtain a secure

II. OKEW^ viii.

[ 172 ] Sovereign Reason

foundation for knowledge we must therefore separate out those
beliefs which are “inferred” from or “caused” by other beliefs, from
the beliefs which are both logically and psychologically prior to all
others. The “hardest” or “most certain” of all data (that is, data
which “resist the solvent influence of critical reflection”) are the
truths of logic and the particular facts of sense.^^ The logical start-
ing point of a philosophical inquiry into physics must therefore be
with our immediate, direct perceptions. The problem of the rela-
tion of theoretical physics to the facts of experience can therefore
be amplified as follows:

The laws of physics are believed to be at least approximately true,
though they are not logically necessary, the evidence for them is
empirical. All empirical evidence consists, in the last analysis, of per-
ceptions; thus the world of physics must be, in some sense, continuous
with the world of perceptions, since it is the latter which supphes the
evidence for the laws of physics. . . .

The evidence for the truth of physics is that our perceptions occur as
the laws of physics would lead us to expect— e.g., we see an eclipse
when the astronomers say there will be an eclipse. But physics never
says anything about perceptions, it does not say that we shah see an
eclipse, but something about the sun and the moon. The passage from
what physics asserts to the expected perception is left vague and casual;
it has none of the mathematical precision belonging to physics itself.
We must therefore find an interpretation of physics which gives a due
place to perceptions, if not, we have no right to appeal to the empirical
world.^®

Russell’s problem has therefore a two-fold aspect. One phase of
it consists in finding an “interpretation” for physics which will
make its propositions relevant to the crude materials of sense; and,
as will appear, this concern leads Russell to adopt the view that all
the objects of common-sense and developed science are logical con-
structions out of events— owe perceptions being a proper sub-class
of the class of events. The other phase of the problem consists in
justifying the truth-claims of physics; and this concern leads Rus-
sell to examine what data may serve as the most indubitable foun-
dation for our knowledge, and to a discussion of the causal theory
of perception as the ground for assuming the existence of events
that are not perceptions. The two aspects of the problem are not
independent, since the resolution of the second depends in part on

12. OKEW, 75,

13. AM, 6-7.

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell [ 173 ]

the answer to the first, whereas the first requires that the “indubi-
table entities” (which is the business of the second to specify) are
already available. However, in the remainder of the present section
I shall briefly examine some of Russell’s views on perceptive knowl-
edge; the discussion of his analysis of scientific objects will be left
for the final section.

2. According to Russell, the original datum of experience con-
sists of perceptions which are held to be known “non-inferentially”;
included in this original datum are such items as specific shapes
and colors, and relations like something being earlier than some-
thing else or something being above something else. Common-sense
objects like tables and books, on the other hand, must be regarded
as in some sense “inferred.” They are said to be “inferred,” not
because we have actually inferred them, but because our knowl-
edge of them rests upon correlations between perceptions. These
correlations are not invariable, and since we may be led to enter-
tain false expectations by relying on them we do not “genuinely
know” common-sense objects.^^ The proper comment upon this
conclusion, so it seems to me, is to insist that we sometimes do know
physical objects like tables and chairs, in a perfectly good and fa-
miliar sense of “know,” in spite of the fact that we may sometimes
be deceived about them. But this is not the issue I now wish to
raise, important though it is. The question I want to put is whether,
in distinguishing between perceptions as primitive and physical
objects as derivative from perceptions, Russell is doing logic or
psychology. Russell’s problem certainly requires the distinction to
be one of logic, for 'his aim is to define physical objects in terms of
sensory qualities. From this point of view it is clearly irrelevmt
whether in the genesis of our knowledge the apprehension of dis-
crete sensory qualities comes before or after the apprehension of
configurations of qualities. Russell himself frequently makes it plain
that it is not questions of psychology with which he is concerned.^®
Nevertheless, he also says that the primitive data of knowledge must
not only be logically but also psychologically prior to the knowl-
edge he regards as derivative. Thus, he declares that the “space”

14. AM, 186.

15. See, for example, his quite explicit statement on this point in his “Pro-
fessor Dewey’s ‘Essays in E^cperimental Logic,”* The Joztrml of FMlosopby,
VoL XVI (1919), 8 fi.

[174] Sovereign Reason

into which all the percepts of one person fit is a ‘‘constructed space,
the construction being achieved during the first months of hfeP'^^
And here Russell is obviously talking psychology. However that
may be, the empirical evidence drawn from modem psychology is
certainly unfavorable to the notion that perceptions are psychologi-
cally primitive. On the contrary, that evidence supports the view
that sensory qualities and relations are obtained only as the end-
products of a deliberate process of discrimination and analysis, a
process which is carried on within the framework of a “common-
sense” knowledge of physical objects.

What reasons are there for regarding perceptions as the most
indubitable data of knowledge^ As far as one can ascertam, Russell
rests his case on the simple dictum that what is more primitive is
also the more certain. Thus, he asserts that

When we reflect upon the beliefs which are logically but not psycho-
logically primitive, we find that, unless they can on reflection be deduced
by a logical process from beliefs which are also psychologically primi-
tive, our confidence in their truth tends to dimimsh the more we think
about them.

And he concludes that “There is . . . more need of justifying our
psychologically derivative beliefs than of justifying those that are
primitive.”^’^ Why should this be so? Russell’s answer is: because
the derivative beliefs are non-demonstratively “inferred” from the
primitive ones and are therefore less certain than the premises from
which they are drawn, and because a belief is the more certain the
“shorter” is the causal route from the cause of a belief to the belief.^^

These views seem to me to rest on unsatisfactory evidence. Russell
calls those data “hard” which resist the solvent influence of critical
reflection. But in order to undertake such reflection, it is necessary
to employ some principles in terms of which the attribution of
“hardness” to specific data is to be evaluated; and such principles,
if their authority is to count for anything, must be better warranted
than the materials under judgment. However, such principles can
themselves be warranted only by the outcome of our general experi-

16. AM, ZS2, italics not in the text,

17. OKEW, 74-5.

18. IMT, 164, 200. He also says* . A given reaction may be regarded
as knowledge of various different occurrences. . . , The nearer our starting
point [in the process leading to a certain event in the brain] is to the brain,
the more accurate becomes the knowledge displayed in our reactions.” F, 132.

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell [ 175 ]

cnce, and their certainty—of whatever degree this may be-cannot
therefore be a consequence of their being psychologically primitive.
RusselFs entire argument, moreover, is based on a principle of
reasoning which I find most debatable—the principle that the con-
clusion of a non-demonstrative inference cannot be more certain
than any of its premisses. Quite the contrary appears to be the
case in general. To take a simple illustration, if a number of wit-
nesses testify to the occurrence of some event, the proposition that
the event did occur may be more certain than any single item in
the testimony, provided those items are independent. It is indeed
partly in terms of the principle embodied in this example that the
credibility of scientific theories is augmented. And if one accepts it
as generally valid, little ground remains for the view that our psy-
chologically primitive beliefs are also our most certain ones.^^

Russell is not unaware of how duEcult it is to identify primitive,
^‘non-inferred” data. Thus, he notes that the records of any observa-
tion or experiment always involve an ‘"interpretation” of the facts
by the help of a certain amount of theory. He also acknowledges
that “perceptions of which we are not sufficiently conscious to
express them in words are scientifically negligible^ our premisses
must be fact which we have explicitly noted.”^ And elsewhere he
insists that “a form of words is a social phenomenon,” so that a
person must know the language of which it is a part, as well as be
exposed to certain stimuli, if he is to make true assertions.^^ The
admission of the socially conditioned character of significant per-
ception would normally be considered as a good ground for reject-
ing the view that perceptions are psychologically primitive. Never-
theless, Russell believes that it is possible to whittle away the
element of interpretation in perceptive knowledge, and that “we
can approach asymptotically to the pure datum.”^ But if pure data
can be reached only asymptotically— and that means they are never
actually reached— why is it important to try to base all our knowl-
edge upon them? Moreover, Russell admits that some “interpreta-

19. On some of the diJSSculdes in the view that the “shortness” of the causal
route between a belief and its cause can be taken as a measure of the cer-
tainty of the belief, see my “Mr. Russell on Meaning and Truth ” The Journal
of Philosophy, Vol. XXXVIH (1941), and reprinted in this volume.

20. AM, 200,

21. F, 262.

22. IMT, 155.

[ I j6] Sovereign Reason

tions” which accompany perceptions “can only be discovered by
careful theory, and can never be made introspectively obvious”;
and he thinks that such interpretations, at any rate, “ought to be
included in the perception.”^ One cannot therefore help askmg:
If our actual data involve an element of “interpretation” and “in-
ference,” how in principle can we exclude physical objects as ob-
jects of knowledge on the ground that physical objects involve an
element of “inference”^^ The distinction between the primitive and
the “inferred” certainly shows the mark of being irrelevant to a
working epistemology.

In any event, by his mixing up questions of logic with those of
psychology Russell compromises at the very outset his program of
exhibiting common-sense and scientific objects as logical construc-
tions. That program presumably requires the analysis of these ob-
jects as structures of elements which are experientially accessible.
If such an analysis is to be more than a formal logical exercise, those
elements cannot simply be postulated to exist; and Russell’s psy-
chologically primitive “pure data” apparently have just this status.

3. Russell introduces another distracting confusion when, in
order to estabhsh the importance of regarding physical objects as
constructions, he argues the case for an epistemological dualism and
against “naive realism.” The truth or falsity of epistemological dual-
ism does not seem to me germane to the question whether physical
objects are analyzable into structures of specified entities. I shall
therefore comment only briefly on the following views central to
Russell’s epistemology: that our percepts are located in our brains;
that the causal theory of perception is the ground for inferring the
existence of unperceived events; and that our knowledge of physical
objects is “inferred” from percepts in our brain.

Russell maintains that, although it may be natural to suppose that
what a physiologist sees when he is observing a living brain is in the
brain he is observing, in fact “if we are speaking of physical space,
what the physiologist sees is in his own brain,”^^ This seems to me
incredibly wrong if the word “see” is being used in the ordinary
sense in which we talk about seeing a physical object; and it is this
ordinary sense of the word which Russell is employing when he
supposes a physiologist to be observing a brain. There might indeed

23. AM ^ 189.

24. P, 140.

The Philosophy of Bertrafid Russell [ 177 ]

be a sense of “see” in which I see my own brain, though I have not
the slightest inkling as to what that sense is. I do know, however,
that I have never seen any portion of my own brain, and that I
have seen many physical objects— where the statement that I have
not seen one but seen the other is to be understood in the customary
sense of “see.” To deny the facts expressed by the statement seems
to be absurd; and such a denial can be understood only if we sup-
pose that the person making the denial is misusing language. Alore-
over, such facts seem to me basic for every sound epistemology and
every sound interpretation of science; and, however difficult it may
be to do so, the findings of physics and physiology must be inter-
preted so as to square with them.

The evidence Russell offers for the causal theory of perception
derives whatever plausibility it has from the tacit assumptions of
common-sense knowledge; accordingly, it is not this theory which
can justify such common-sense assumptions as that our perceptions
may have unperceived causes. Russell’s chief argument for that
theory consists in showing that if we accept the theory we can
formulate the course of events in “simple causal laws.” For example,
he declares that if many people see and hear a gun fired, the further
they are situated from it the longer is the interval between the
seeing and the hearing. He thinks it is therefore “natural to suppose
that the sound travels over the intervening space, in which case some-
thing must be happening even in places where there is no one with
ears to hear.”^^ But why does it seem “natural” to suppose this?
Does not the “naturalness” receive its support from the experimental
confirmations which are found for such assumptions in the context
of our manipulating physical objects^ Russell also thinks that, al-
though the phenomenalist view (that there are no unperceived
events) is not logically impossible, it is an unplausible view, because
it is incompatible with physical determinism,^® But why is the as-
sumption unplausible that “imaginary” or “fictitious” entities are
causally eflScacious? If the unplausibility does not rest upon the
findings of disciplined experience, embodied in common-sense knowl-
edge, upon what can it rest?

Though Russell speaks much of “inferring” things, it is not clear
in what sense he believes physical objects to be “inferred” from

25. AM , 209.

26. AM , 214.

[ 178 ] Sovereign Reason

perceptions. He uses the term ‘Werence” in at least the following
distinct ways: in the ordinary sense of logically deducing one prop-
osition from another; in the familiar sense of asserting a proposition
on evidence which makes that proposition probable; in the sense
in which something which is perceived with an ^‘accompanying
interpretation” is obtained from something else that is supposed to
be perceived directly or without interpretation, and finally, m the
sense in which something that is a logical construction is obtained
from entities out of which it is constructed. It is evident that when
Russell says that the sun is inferred from our percepts, he does not
mean that it is inferred in either of the first two senses specified,
and he repeatedly asserts that he does not mean it in these senses. On
the other hand, he declares that

So long as naive realism remained tenable, perception was knowledge
of a physical object, obtained through the senses, not by inference. But
in accepting the causal theory of perception we have committed our-
selves to the view that perception gives no immediate knowledge of a
physical object, but at best a datum for inference.^'^

In this passage Russell is apparently using the third sense of “infer-
nece”; and when he uses the term in this way he sometimes talks of
an inference as an unconscious physiological process. But elsewhere
he also says that “Modem physics reduces matter to a set of events.
^ , . The events that take the place of matter in the old sense are
inferred from their effect on eyes, photographic plates, and other
instruments. . . And in this passage what is “inferred” is a
physical object, viewed as a construction out of such events as per-
ceptions. Russell does not therefore distinguish between the last
two senses of “inference” listed above, and as a consequence it is
difficult to extract a coherent formulation of how physical objects
are inferred from percepts. However that may be, if our knowledge
of the sun is “inferred” in the third sense of the term, the inference
is presumably grounded in the causal theory of perception, and
therefore in the procedures involved in common-sense knowledge
of things. On the other hand, if that knowledge is “inferential” in

27. AM, 218, Cf. also: “Our knowledge of the physical world is not at first
inferenrial, but this is only because we take our precepts to be the physical
world.” P, 130*

28. P, 157.

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell [ 179 ]

the fourth sense, the fact that the sun is a logical construction (if
it is a fact) in no way prejudices the claim that we do have knowl-
edge of it; for the exhibition of the sun as a construction out of
events like perceptions obviously requires knowledge of the sun.

3 -

I. It is a common error of Russell’s critics to interpret his view
that the physical world is a logical construction, as if he intended
to deny that there are physical objects in the ordinary sense of this
phrase. For this misunderstanding he is at least partly to blame.
Thus he declares: ‘‘Common sense imagines that when it sees a
table it sees a table. This is gross delusion.”^^ Again, commenting
on Dr. Johnson’s refutation of Berkeley, he maintains that “If he
had known that his foot never touched the stone, and that both were
only complicated systems of wave-motions, he might have been
less satisfied with his refutation.”^^ And elsewhere he says that on
the view he is recommending, “the ‘pushiness’ of matter disappears
altogether. . . . ‘Matter’ is a convenient formula for describing
what happens where it isn’t.”^^

There are indeed several not always compatible tendencies strug-
gling for mastery in Russell’s use of his supreme maxim for philos-
ophizing. One of them is that represented by the conception of
experience according to which the objects of what is immediately
“known” are in the brain; a second is the view that if something is
a logical construction, it is v)e who have constructed it in time;
another is stated by the conception that $0 long as some “indubitable
set of objects” can be specified which wiU satisfy given formulae,
then any object in that set may be substituted for the “inferred”
object satisfying those formulae; and a fourth is the view that an
object is a construction when it is analyzable into a structure of
identifiable elements.

It has already been argued that the first of these tendencies is
essentially irrelevant to (or at any rate, can be kept distinct from)
the use of Russell’s maxim. The second is often explicitly disavowed
by Russell himself, though he often betrays his disavowal. But be-

29. ABC ^ 213.

30. P, 279.

31. P, 159.

[ i8o ] Sovereign Reason

fore examining the incidence of the remaining two tendencies upon
his reconstruction of physical theory, I want to comment on the
passages cited from RusseE in the opening paragraph of this sec-
tion. Is it a delusion when, under appropriate circumstances, we
claim to see a table? A table may indeed be a logical construction;
but in the sense in which we ordinarily use the words ‘‘see” and
“table,” it may be quite true that we do see a table, this mode of
expressing what is happening is the appropriate way of putting the
matter. Again, if when Dr. Johnson kicked a stone his foot never
touched the stone, what did his foot do? To say that his foot never
touched the stone, because both his foot and the stone were systems
of radiation, is to misuse language, for in the specified context the
words “foot,” “stone,” “kicked,” and “touched” are being so used
that it is correct to say Dr. Johnson kicked a stone and therefore his
foot touched it. To be sure, under some other circumstances, and
for the sake of certain ends, it might be advisable to use a different
language in describing what had happened. But it obviously cannot
be wrong to employ ordinary language in accordance with ordi-
nary usage. And finaUy, it seems to me grotesque to say that the
“pushiness” of matter can disappear as a consequence of a new
analysis or redefinition of matter. We have learned to apply the
word “pushy” to certain identifiable characteristics of material
objects; and such a use of the word is correct, simply because that
is the usage that had been established for it. Whatever may be the
outcome of analyzing material objects, their identifiable properties
win remain their identifiable properties, and it will be correct to
apply the standardized expressions to them. It will certaintly not
be correct to designate a physical body as a formula.

2 . Let us turn to RusselFs re-interpretation of physics. The first
question I want to ask is what marks, if any, distinguish something
which is a construction from something that is not. Russell seems
to suggest at least two. One is the suggestion that something is a
construction when it has properties which satisfy some mathematical
formula or equation. He says, for example,

The electron has very convenient properties, and is therefore prob-
ably a logical structure upon which we concentrate attention just be-
cause of these properties. A rather haphazard set of particulars may be
capable of being coEected into groups each of which has very agreeable
smooth mathematical properties; but we have no right to suppose Nature

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell [ i8i ]

so kind to the mathematician as to have created particulars with Just
such properties as he would wish to find

One doesn’t know how seriously to take such statements, especially
since they imply, what is questionably the case, that it is we who
invariably manufacture the properties which are convenient for
the purposes of mathematical physics. It is certainly not evident
what nght we have to suppose that we have no right to suppose
that Nature created at least some of them. It is one thing to say
that for the sake of developing mathematical physics we have iso-
lated certain features of things and ignored others; it is quite an-
other thing to maintain that what we have selected we have also
manufactured. Moreover, it is not clear w^hy, on this criterion, the
events out of which electrons and other objects are said to be con-
structions should not themselves be regarded as constructions. After
all, as will be seen presently, they too have remarkably smooth
mathematical properties: they fall into groups having exquisitely
neat internal structures.

The second suggestion is more important. According to it, some-
thing is a construction when it is complex. Accordingly, since physi-
cal bodies as well as scientific objects like electrons are analyzable
—indeed, on Russell’s view into relations between ultimate simples—
whereas perceptions and other events are not, the former are con-
structions out of the latter. The “ultimate furniture of the world”
thus consists of a very large, perhaps infinite, number of events
which have various specific relations to each other. When described
in terms of spatio-temporal characteristics, these “particulars” are
assumed to have quite small spatial and temporal dimensions. More-
over, some of these particulars (though not all) are perceived, and
at least some of their qualities and relations are also immediately
apprehended. Events, their simple qualities and their relations, are
thus the building materials, the “crude data,” in terms of which
physics is to be “interpreted.”

Russell admits that, although he beheves his particulars are simples,
in the sense that they have no “parts” or internal “structure,” it is
impossible to prove once for all that they are such. And although
he also admits that simples are not directly experienced “but known
only inferentially as the limit of analysis,” he maintains it is desir-

32. AM, 319- At another place Russell proposes as a supplement to Occam’s
razor the principle 'What is logically convenient to be artificial.” AM, 290.

[ iSz ] * Sovereign Reason

able to exhibit objects as constructions out of simples. His belief
in the existence of simples rests on self-evidence: “It seems obvious
to me . . . that what is complex must be composed of simples, though
the number of constituents may be infinite.”^^ Against such a view
it is arguable that simplictiy is a relative and systemic notion, and
that the justification for taking anything to be a simple rests on the
clarification, the systematization, or the control of subject-matter
which follows from a given mode of analysis. The issue is, however,
not of great importance for the sequel. An issue of more serious
concern is raised by Russell’s admission that simples can be known
only as the limits of analysis. For in the first place, he must also
admit that we cannot in consequence literally begin with simples,
trace through sequentially the complex patterns of their interrela-
tions, and so finally reach the familiar objects of daily life. And
in the second place, it becomes difficult to understand, even if we
did succeed in exhibiting objects as constructions out of simples,
just what such an analysis contributes to bridging the gulf between
the propositions of physics and the familiar world of daily experi-
ence. However, Russell’s subsequent analyses are not vitally affected
by these doubts: whether events are ultimate particulars or not, the
important part of his claim is that at least some of them are per-
ceptions, and that they are relevant to the analysis only because of
their relations to other things, and not because of a demonstrated
lack of internal structure.^^

One point is clear: RusseU does not exhibit the logical structure
of the physical world entirely in terms of entities which he regards
as “known,” since his particulars include events that are not percep-
tions. Such events are held by him to be “inferred,” largely on the
strength of the causal theory of perception and in order to avoid
the “unplausible” consequences of a radical phenomenalism. Rus-
sell’s own remark on the inclusion of unperceived (and therefore
“inferred”) events into the ultimate furniture of the world is one
that many of his readers must have whispered to themselves: “If

33. CBP, 375.

34. Russell declares in this connection “Atoms were formerly particulars;
now they have ceased to be so. But that has not falsified the chemical proposi-
tions that can be enunciated without taking account of their structure.”
AMy 278. The first sentence in this passage is seriously misleading, since it
suggests that whether something is a particular or not depends on the state
of our knowledge, and that therefore a construction is something made by us.

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell [ 183 ]

we have once admitted nnperceived events, there is no very ob-
vious reason for picking and choosing among the events which
physics leads us to infer.”^® How many needless excursions into
sterile epistemological speculations could have been avoided if
this remark had been taken seriously! But the remark does make it
plain that the significance of exhibiting things as constructions
does not consist in circumventing the need for making inferences
or in denying the existence of physical objects. The remark shows
that the importance of the enterprise hes in analyzing or defining
the sense of such expressions as “physical object,” “point,” “elec-
tron,” and so on.

3. Russell’s definition of physical object as a class of classes of
events, related by certain laws of “perspective” and causal laws,
is well known. It is unnecessary to dwell upon it here. It is suffi-
cient to note that his analysis is motivated by the desire to show
the otiose character of the traditional assumption of permanent,
indestructible substances which mysteriously underlie the flux of
events. I shall, however, examine his analysis of points (or point-
instants), in order to suggest what seems to me a fundamental
criticism of the approach to the “critique of abstractions” which
Russell credits to, and shares with, Whitehead.

There is an obvious need for an analysis of points, if we are to
become clear about the way in which the formulations of theo-
retical science are applied to matters of concrete experience. The
term occurs in physical geometry, mathematical dynamics, and
many other theories; and these theones are admittedly successful
in organizing and predicting the course of events. At the same
time, there seems to be nothing in our experience which corre-
sponds to the term. The postulation of points as unique types of
existences will not solve the problem, since such a postulation does
not answer the question just how points are connected with the
gross materials of experience. As Russell says, “What we know
about points is that they are useful technically— so useful that we
must seek an interpretation of the propositions in which, symboli-
cally, they occur.” His own answer to the problem consists in
specifying certain “structures having certain geometrical prop-
erties and composed of the raw material of the physical world.”®®

35. AM, 325.

36. AM, 290, 294.

[184] Sovereign Reasofi

In outline, Russell’s definition of point-instants is as follows:
Every event is “compresent” with a number of others; i.e., every
event has a common “region” with an indefinite number of other
events, although the latter do not necessarily overlap with each
other. If five events are compresent with each other, they are said
to be related by the relation called “co-punctuality.” If in a group
of five or more events every set of five events has the relation of
co-punctuality, the group is said to be co-punctuaL And finally,
if a co-punctual group cannot be enlarged without losing its co-
punctual character, the group is called a “point.” It only remains to
show that points so defined exist; and to show this it is sufficient
to assume that “all events (or at least all events co-punctual with
a given co-punctual quintet) can be welI-ordered”~an assumption
that Russell proceeds to make.^'^ And since it turns out that points
thus specified satisfy all the usual mathematical requirements, Rus-
sell believes he has satisfactorily exhibited the logical construction
of points.

Nevertheless, the analysis is to me very perplexing. Let me first
call attention to an observation already made. Events, in the sense
in which Russell uses the term, are the termini of analysis, and if
they are apprehended by us at all they are not apprehended as
psychological primitives. In this sense, therefore, events are not
the “raw materials” of adult experience, whatever else might be
the case for infants and other animals. If a point is what Russell
defines it to be, the physicist who wishes to make a concrete appli-
cation of statements about points must therefore first proceed to
isolate the material (events) in terms of which points are to be
eventually identified. In order to carry through this process, the
physicist will certainly have to make use of the distinctions and
findings of gross, macroscopic experience. But this is not all.
Assuming that events have been isolated, co-punctual groups of
events must next be found. However, since a co-punctual group
may have an indefinite number of event-members, the assertion
that a given group is co-punctual will in general be a hypothesis.
The situation does not become easier when the physicist next tries
to identify those co-punctual groups which are points: the assertion
that a class of events is a point will be a conjecture for which only

37. AM, 299. A class is said to be well-ordered if its members can be serially
arranged m such a way that every sub-class in this series has a first member*

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell [ 185 ]

the most mcomplete sort of evidence can be available. If, as Rus-
sell believes, the existence of physical objects involves “inference,”
those inferences pale in comparison with the inferences required
to assert the existence of points.

I now come to the serious basis of my perplexity. Russell’s defi-
nition exhibits no concern whatever for the way in which physi-
cists actually use expressions like “point.” In the first place, it is
certainly not evident that physicists do in fact apply the term to
structures of events. On the contrary, there is some evidence to
show that they employ it in a somewhat different fashion, using
it in connection with bodies identifiable in gross experience and
whose magnitudes vary from case to case according to the needs
of specific problems. To be sure, the application of the term is
frequently sloppy and vague, and its rules cannot in general be
made precise. But the vagueness and sloppiness are facts which a
philosophy of science must face squarely, and they cannot be cir-
cumvented by an ingenious but essentially irrelevant proposal as
to how the term might be used.

This brings me to another phase of the difficulty It has already
been noted that Russell does not always distinguish between two
distinct views as to what is required in order to exhibit the logical
structure of an object* on one of them, the logical construction of
an object is exhibited when some “indubitable set of objects” is
specified which satisfies a given formula; on the other view, the
logical construction of an object is exhibited when statements
about that object are so interpreted that the interpretations make
expheit how those statements are used (or alternately, what those
statements “mean”). The difference between these views is pro-
found; and if the supreme maxim of philosophizing is to eventuate
in clarification and not simply in a highly ingenious symbolic con-
struction, it is the second view which must be adopted. Certainly
Russell himself must have imagined himself to be acting upon this
second view when he claimed that his account of the cardinal
numbers made intelligible their application to the world of count-
able objects. On the other hand, his definition of points and other
scientific objects conforms only to the requirements of the first
view, and thereby offers no indication of the connection between
the abstractions of physics and the familiar world. Like the defi-
nitions given by "Whitehead with the aid of the principle of ex-

[ i86 ] Sovereign Reason

tensive abstraction, Russell’s definitions formulate what are in
effect another set of abstract formulae, quite out of touch with the
accessible materials of the world. His “interpretation” of the equa-
tions of physics thus yields only another mathematical system,
with respect to which the same problems that initiated the entire
analysis emerge once more.^^

4. One further set of general issues remains to be discussed. One
of these issues arises in connection with Russell’s redefinition of
matter (common-sense objects, electrons, etc.) so as to avoid the
hypothesis of an underlying permanent substance. He declares:

The events out of which we have been constructing the physical
world are very different from matter as traditionally understood. Matter
was expected to be impenetrable and indestructible. The matter that we
construct is impenetrable as a result of definition: the matter in a place
IS all the events that are there, and consequendy no other event or piece
of matter can be there. This is a tautology, not a physical fact. . . .
Indestructibility, on the other hand, is an empirical property, believed
to be approximately but not exacdy possessed by matter. . .

And elsewhere he asserts that “Impenetrability used to be a noble
property of matter, a kind of Declaration of Independence; now
it is a merely tautological result of the way in which matter is
defined.”^® Russell is of course right in calling attention to the
fact that many propositions in physics as well as in everyday dis-
course are not contingent, since they are definitional in nature. It
is not always clear which propositions have this character, and

38. One need only compare Russell’s definitions of points with such analy-
ses as those of Mach concerning mass and temperature or those of N. R.
Campbell concerning physical measurement, to appreciate the difference be-
tween an analysis which is quasi-mathematics and an analysis which is directed
toward actual usage.

It is also interesting to note that Russell criticizes one of Eddington’s inter-
pretations of certain equations in relativity theory in a spirit analogous to the
criticism which the above paragraph makes of him. Eddington reads these
equations to signify that electrons adjust their dimensions to the radius of
curvature of the universe, and maintains that this adjustment can be ascer-
tained by ‘‘direct measurement,” Russell’s remarks are as follows: “Now the
electron may be, theoretically, a perfect spatial unit, but we certainly cannot
compare its size with that of larger bodies directly^ without assuming any
previous physical knowledge. It seems that Prof. Eddington is postulating an
ideal observer, who can see electrons just as directly as . . . we can see a
metre rod. In short his ‘direct measurement’ is an operation as abstract and
theoretical as his mathematical symbolism.” AM, 92,

39. AM, 385.

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell [ 187 ]

the difSculty in identifying them arises partly from the fact that
the body of our knowledge can be organized in different ways.
For example, if the equality in weight of two objects is defined in
terms of their being in equihbrium when placed at the extremities
of a lever which is supported at its mid-point, the law of the lever
for this individual case is a truistic consequence of this mode of
measuring weights. But if the principle of the lever is now a
definition, the law of spring balances (Hooke’s law) is not, and
is empirically contingent. It is, however, possible to define the
equality of weights in terms of Hooke’s law, so that, although
this law now functions as part of a definition, the law of the
lever acquires the status of a contingent physical principle. Ac-
cordingly, to say that a law is a convention or tautology re-
quires supplementation by a specification of its function in a
particular systematization of physics, where the system of phys-
sics as a whole is not itself accepted on definitional grounds.
It is thus not obvious that in every use of the words “im-
penetrability” and “matter,” the impenetrability of matter is a
logically necessary truth. For example, it is an empirical fact that
a mixture of equal volumes of alcohol and water occupies a volume
less than the arithmetical sum of the two, whereas a mixture of
two equal volumes of water occupies a volume equal to this sum.
If the concept of impenetrability is apphed to this case, the im-
penetrability of matter appears to be a contingent truth. The point
is, of course, that an “interpretation” of physics which leads to
equating a logically necessary proposition with one that is con-
tingent cannot be correct.^^

41. Russell is often careless in some of his judgments as to which proposi-
tions are defimtional. His definition of physical object leads him to say that
“Things are those series of aspects which obey the laws of physics,” (OKEW,
1 17), from which it would seem to follow that the laws of physics are defini-
tions. Indeed, he does say that “Almost all the ‘great pnnciples’ of tradinonal
physics turn out to be like the ‘great law’ that there are always three feet to
a yard,” (ABC, 221). This is palpably absurd when taken without senous
qualifications, and in this connection one must reramd Russell of one of his
own jibes agamst certain philosophers “Dr. Schiller says that the external
world was first discovered by a low manne ammal he calls ‘Grumps,’ who
swallowed a bit of rock that disagreed with him, and argued that he would
not have given himself such a pam, and therefore there must be an external
world. One is tempted to think that, at the time when Professor Dewey wrote,
many people in the newer countries had not yet made the disagreeable experi-
ence which Grumps made. Meanwhile, whatever accusation pragmatists may
bring, I shall conanue to protest that it was not I who made the world.” hi

[ i88 ] Sovereign Reason

A second general issue arises in connection with a technical de-
tail in Russell’s interpretation of physics. If the objects of theoreti-
cal physics are ail constructions, then the symbols referring to
them in the statements of physics are theoretically eliminable. Un-
fortunately, Russell has not formulated the translations of the
requisite sort for specific statements which occur in treatises (e g.,
statements like “Zinc arsenite is insoluble m water”), although he
has of course indicated the general procedure to be followed in
constructing such translations. There are, however, fairly good
reasons for doubting whether the elimination of symbols for con-
structs can be carried through without introducing assumptions of
a dubious character. These reasons are based on the fact that in
various parts of mathematics as well as in the empirical sciences
certain expressions are usually so defined that in general they can-
not be eliminated by the help of methods customarily accepted.
For example, so-called “functor-expressions” like “the sum of,”
are often defined recursively, so that such expressions cannot be
eliminated from statements like “The sum of x and y is equal to
the sum of y and xP And if the so-called “dispositional predicates,”
like “soluble,” are introduced into physics by the help of condi-
tional definitions, as Carnap has suggested, an analogous difiSculty
arises with respect to them. To be sure, the desired elimination can
be effected, provided we are willing to employ variables of a
sufficiently high type; but the use of such variables appears to in-
volve an “ontology” which it is not easy to accept. In particular,
if we recall Russell’s definition of classes and his view that a physi-
cal body is a class of classes of events, a statement about a body
must finally be replaced by a statement about a property of prop-
erties— that is, about a property which is at least of type two. But
does the assumption that there is such a property contribute much
toward “assimilating” physics to the crude materials of perception?
It seems to me, therefore, that, instead of making the elimination
of symbols for constructs the goal of the logical analysis of physics,

‘‘Professor Dewey’s ‘Essays in Experimental Logic,’ ” The Journal of Phlos-
ophy^ Vol. XVI (1919), 26. On the^ other hand, Russell himself recognizes
the limitations m the view that physics is a huge tautology. In a penetrating
brief cntique of Eddington, he notes that the allegedly tautological character
of the principles of the conservation of mass and of momentum holds only
“in the deductive system [of physics]: in their empirical meanings these laws
are by no means logical necessities.” AM, 89.

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell [ 189 ]

a more reasonable and fruitful objective would be the following:
to render explicit the pattern of interconnections between con-
structs and observations, on the strength of which these latter can
function as relevant evidence for theories about the former.

I have been stressing throughout this essay the hmitations of
Russell’s approach to the logical problems of science, and I have
not thought it worthwhile to underscore their well-known ex-
cellencies. No student of his writings can fail to acknowledge the
great service Russell’s analyses have rendered to an adequate under-
standing of the mathematical sciences. He has made plam the highly
selective character of physical theories, as well as the intricate
transformations and reorganizations of sensory material w^hich are
involved in their use. He has exhibited the semi-arbitrary char-
acter of many symbolic constructions and the definitional nature
of many physical propositions; and he has devised pow^erful tech-
niques for isolating, and in some measure reducing, such arbitrari-
ness and conventionality. Russell has not said the last word upon
these matters; but he has certainly inspired a great multitude of
students to try to say a better one. If the example of his own splen-
did devotion to independent thinking counts for anything, it is
safe to beheve that he would not prefer to have a diJSferent estimate
placed upon his efforts.

11

Mr. Russell
on Meaning and Truth

TThe ostensible aim of Mr. Russell’s latest book^— the substance of
his William James Lectures at Harvard— is to specify" what is meant
by ‘‘empirical evidence” and to determine what the connections are
between such evidence and materially true propositions. But his
long and repetitious discussion of these questions meanders over a
large territory and touches upon most of the traditional problems
in the theory of knowledge. In this review I wish to examine a few
of the issues he raises.

I.

Mr. Russell’s entire discussion is controlled by a fundamental
distinction he draws between two types of inquiry frequently in-

I. An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth. Bertrand Russell. New York. W. W.
Norton & Company, 1940. 445 pp. $3.75.

[ 190 1

Mr. Russell on Meaning and Truth [ 191 1

eluded in the theory of knowledge. The first aims to discover what
sort of phenomenon knowledge is and how it is acquired, and it
proceeds by studying the behavior of living organisms under ap-
propriate circumstances. It therefore takes for granted the scien-
tific account of the world and is an inquiry into matters of fact on
par with any other scientific discipline.

The second type of inquiry does not take science for granted
and is said to be philosophically more important than the first.

We all start from “naive realism,” i.e., the doctrine that things are what
they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones are hard, and that
snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hard-
ness of stones, and the coldness of now, are not the greenness, hardness,
and coldness that we know in our own experience, but something very
different. The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone,
is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone
upon himself. Thus science seems to be at war with itself: when it most
means to be objective, it finds itself plunged into subjectivity against its
will. Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive
realism is false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is
false. (P. 14.)

It is therefore necessary to re-examine what passes for knowledge
and -discover the ultimate premises on which claims to knowledge
must be based. These ^‘epistemological premises’’ must possess the
following three characteristics: they must be logically prior to
other propositions, and thus serve as starting points for deduction;
they must be psychologically prior ^ and so be beliefs which are
not caused by other beliefs; and they must be true as far as we can
ascertain, Mr, Russell believes that there are epistemological premises:,
and his inquiry is directed toward discovering their distinctive
nature. In fact, he holds that if we are to escape from complete
scepticism, we must assume “perceptive premises” as basic— beliefs
which are “caused, as immediately as possible, by a percept” (p.
168), and whose truth is wholly dependent on the one occurrence
we “notice” at the time (p. 172). What we notice, however, are
percepts, and percepts are inside our heads (p. 428).

Mr. Russell is so convinced that the “common-sense” view of
the world is false, that he nowhere argues the point. The basis for
Mr. Russell’s rejection of “naive realism” is presumably the fact
that a complicated causal chain mediates between the occurrence
of physical events and our perceptions of them, and that without

[ 192 ] Sovereign Reason

the existence of an appropriate physical and physiological mech-
anism there would be no perception of qualities. But it is by no
means evident how it follows from this that the grass is not green
in the familiar sense of the term, and that greenness is a quality
located in a “perceptual space” distinct from the “physical space”
occupied by the grass. Indeed, it is not physics which requires
us to assume this, for physics is concerned with determining the
conditions under which such qualities as greenness occur, and it
identifies and locates such sensory quahties in much the same way
as it identifies and locates electro-magnetic disturbances. It is
Mr. Russell’s interpretation of physics in terms of an epistemo-
logical duahsm, rather than any special findings of the sciences,
which require the exclusion of qualities from “physical space.” The
question is too involved to be settled in a review. But it is worth
noting that Mr. Russell’s interpretation of science is not the exclu-
sive one, and that not all the alternatives lead to the radical
bifurcation into “physical” and “perceptual spaces” which accom-
pany his view. Considering the importance of the issue, it is there-
fore somewhat surprising that he does not even mention the views
of objective-relativists like Professor McGilvary, which avoid such
a bifurcation, or the view, advanced in 1936 by Mr. G. A. Paul
and more recently by Mr. A. Ayer, that the “location” of per-
ceived qualities in a distinctive “perceptual space” does not involve
questions of fact but only of linguistic convention.

However that may be, there are a number of difficulties mtemal
to Mr. Russell’s fundamental distinction between the physical and
the perceptual, and it will be instructive to consider a few of them.
In discussing the relation between perception and knowledge he
presently asks “What we want to know is the resemblance^ if any,
between the sun and ‘seeing the sun’; for it is only in so far as
there is a resemblance that the latter can be a source of knowledge
concerning the former” (p. 146). This is a curious problem in-
deed; for if the sun is in physical space while the percept of the
sun is in visual space, and since on Mr. Russell’s view the organs
of vision can yield only the percept of the sun, it would not seem
rash to conclude that to compare them is a priori impossible. And
yet Mr. Russell assures us that the sun looks round and also is
round (p. 147), and entertains the possibility that the coordinates
of physical stars in physical space are the same as the coordinates

Mr. Russell on Meaning and Truth [ ^93 ]

of visual stars m visual space (p. 300). If the shapes or mag-
nitudes seen by eyes occur in the same space in which eyes occur,
the question whether two shapes are alike has a definite sense, even
if technical difficulties may prevent a ready answer. But in what
sense can we compare a sensory quality with something which, by
hypothesis and not simply because of practical or technical dif-
ficulties, IS inaccessible to the organs of sensed

Mr. Russell proceeds on the tacit assumption that physics and
ordinary vision offer two competing conceptions of the world, with
physics giving the true account. He maintains, however, that the
world which physics is supposed to explore is simply a hypothesis
which simplifies the statement of causal laws, but against which
there can be no argument, “since experience will be the same
whether it exists or not” (p. 294). How on this vie-sv of the
“physical world” physics can refute “common-sense” is not ap-
parent. On the other hand, Mr. Russell also says that while the
space of physics is not directly sensible, it is nevertheless “defin-
able by relation to sensible spaces” (p. 356), and this suggests that
physical space is something that might be perceived if our “percep-
tive faculties were sufficiently extensive” (p 282). But in that
case how can the world of physics be a hypothesis for which no
critical evidence can be obtained? It would be easy to follow Mr.
Russell if he maintained that physical space is not capable of being
perceived, because “physical space” is simply the name for the
order or structure of events and bodies— and is therefore not sub-
ject-matter for perception for exactly the same reason that the pnn-
ciples of statics are not subject-matter for perception. But he quite
clearly does not mean this, for he declares that

Unsophisticated common sense supposes that the book, just as it ap-
pears when seen, is there all the time. This we know to be false. The book
which can exist unseen must, if it exists, be the sort of thing that physics
says it is, which is quite unlike what we see. (P 293.)

It is difficult to see what sense it makes to say that while physical
space is inaccessible to perception it is nevertheless definable in
perceptual terms.

Again, Mr. Russell * declares that such an experience as seeing
a cat is veridical if there is an antecedent causal chain which, at a
certain point in its backward course, reaches a cat (p. 150). But
it is not clear to what question this is alleged to be an answer. Is

[ 194 ] Sovereign Reason

it an account of the physical conditions necessary for the occur-
rence of certain organic responses, or is it a criterion for the valid-
ity of perceptual propositions^ It does not seem likely that it is the
former, for the problem is not one for the theory of knowledge,
and in any case Mr. Russell has too much respect for the require-
ments of natural science to regard his answer as solving it. But if
it is the latter, how can Mr. Russell escape from a vicious infinite
regress^ For suppose I wish to determine whether my experience
is verdical. I must then, on Mr. Russell’s criterion, investigate the
causal chain w^hich leads backward from my percept in order to
determine whether it contains a cat. But for this purpose I must
use my sense-organs which, by hypothesis, yield only further per-
cepts. I must therefore examine the causal chains leading back
from these new percepts to see whether the appropriate causes
occur in them, and so on ad injinitmn, Mr. Russell’s difficulties
are somewhat reminiscent of the mathematician’s well-known pre-
scription for catching a lion* you must first carefully construct a
circular corral with yourself inside and the lion outside; then per-
form a transformation by inversion, which brings the lion into the
enclosure and takes you outside. Mr. Russell’s problem is how to
catch a cat: your percept is safely within the circle of visual space
and the real cat is in physical space; but unlike the mathematician,
Mr, Russell does not state what transformation will permit the two
to move from one space to the other.

2 ,

In order to discuss his main problem Mr. Russell finds it neces-
sary to construct first a “primary” or “object” language, whose
initial vocabulary is to consist of names, predicates, and relation-
words, all of which are to be ostensively defined. Sentences in this
language are obtained by combining these words according to syn-
tactical rules. But a sentence has both a subjective and an objec-
tive aspect: subjectively, it expresses a state of the user of the
sentence, and its significance is what it expresses; objectively, if it
is true it indicates a fact. Propositions are defined in terms of
sentences: a proposition is the class of all sentences which have the
same significance as a given sentence, although they are also defined
as “psychological and physiological occurrences of certain sorts—
complex images, expectations, etc.” (p. 237).

Mr. Russell on Meaning and Truth [ 195 1

A number of special assumptions control the construction of this
primary language, and these must now be examined. The first is
connected with Tarski’s proof that if we are to avoid antinomies
from the use of the words “true” and “false,” we must admit a
hierarchy of languages* a sentence m a given language can be
characterized as true or false only by sentences belonging to a
higher level of the hierarchy. Mr. Russell concludes from this re-
sult that there must be a language of the lowest level in which the
terms “true” and “false” do not occur; “The hierarchy must
extend upwards indefinitely, but not downwards, since, if it did,
language could never get started. There must, therefore, be a
language of lowest type” (p. 76).

It is not evident, however, that there must indeed be a language
of the lowest type. Tarski’s results do not preclude the possibility
of a hierarchy of languages which is “open” at both ends; and
they do not, it seems to me, even exclude the view that for histoncal
languages the “hierarchy” simply requires that a distinction be
made beween statements according as they do or do not predicate
truth of one another— a distinction which is relative to the context
in which the terms “true” and “false” occur. Moreover, when
Mr. Russell argues for the existence of a lowest-level language on
the ground that otherwise language could not get started, does he
mean “get started” in the historical development of languages or
in the logical reconstruction of a language^ If he means the former,
is there any evidence that the histoncal languages have begun their
development with an initial lowest-level language, or that at any
time they consistently distinguish between statements of differ-
ent levels.^ And if he means the latter, is it not perfectly evident
that a logical reconstruction can be given for a language w'hich
contains the words “true” and “false,” since a formalization of
a semantic meta-language is possible without requinng the prior
formalization of a language free from semantic terms? Mr. Rus-
sell’s appeal to recent work in semantics to support his assumption
of a lowest-level language seems to me entirely gratuitous.

A second principle controlhng the construction of Mr. Russell’s
object language is his distinction betv^een words which have a
meaning only in suitable contexts (such as the word “than”): and
words (such as proper names) which have a “meaning in isola-
tion” and “which have been learnt without its being necessary to

[ 196 ] Sovereign Reason

have previously learnt any other words” (p. 80). Only the latter
type of word is to occur in the primary language Since this dis-
tinction plays a fundamental role in Mr. Russell’s book, it is re-
grettable that he does not discuss it more fully. How strictly is the
phrase “in isolation” to be taken^ Do any words have meaning in
isolation from the various rules and linguistic habits which govern
their combination with other words or their use in various con-
texts.^ On the other hand, Mr. Russell’s view that there are words
whose meanings may be learned solely by a “confrontation” with
the objects they mean (p. 28) without depending upon their
occurrences in sentences (p. 32), is dubious as a factual claim and
question-begging when used to construct a theory of knowledge.
Indeed, Mr. Russell himself admits that “the use of an object-word
as a complete exclamatory sentence is its primary use, from which
its use as part of a larger sentence is derivative” (p. 337, my italics).
It is not easy to determine whether Mr. Russell is stating alleged
matters of fact relevant to the psydhology of learning, or whether
he is arguing matters of logic. Taken as the former, he offers no
respectable evidence on the matter; taken as the latter, he is mis-
leading and unclear, if not definitely wrong, in assuming the ex-
istence of words having meanings “in isolation.”

In any event, however, the sentences of the primary language
are to be atomic in form and they are to express “judgments of
perception”: they will consist of a finite number of proper names
and one word which is not a proper name but a predicate or a rela-
tion-word; and they will be the basic statements “credible inde-
pendently of any argument in their favor” (p. 17). The reason
(Tetre for the primary language is now evident; for “if due care
is taken, all the sentences which embody empirical physical data
will assert or deny propositions of atomic form” which will be
“justified by observation without inference” (p. 53). Mr. Russell
even suggests an explicit criterion for determining whether a word
belongs to the primary language:

Whenever you doubt or reject what you are told, your hearing does
not belong to the object-language; for in such a case you are lingering
on the words, whereas in the object-language the words are transparent,
i.e., their effects upon your behavior depend only upon what they mean,
and are, up to a point, identical with the effects that would result from
the sensible presence of what they designate. (P. 84.)

Mr, Russell on Meanmg and Truth [ J97 ]

A word is thus an object-word if you react “causally” to it. At
the same time Mr. Russell recognizes the role which motor habits
play in the use of words;

... a black object may cause you to say “this is black” as a result of a
mere mechamsm, without any realization of the meanmg of your words
Indeed what is said in this thoughtless way is perhaps more likely to be
true than w^hat is said deliberately; for if you know Enghsh there is a
causal connection between a black object and the word “black ”...
This IS what gives such a high probability of truth to sentences stimu-
lated by the presence of the objects to which they refer. (P. 72.)

It is, however, not altogether clear just what Mr. Russell thinks
he can achieve through constructing his object-language, I shall
waive discussing the factual claim that the occurrence of a black
object can cause the utterance of certain words, since this is a mat-
ter for some branch of natural science to settle and it is a claim for
which Mr. Russell produces no evidence whatsoever. I am frankly
puzzled, however, by his appeal to habits for deciding whether an
utterance is true. For the evaluation of habitual behavior re-
quires just that sort of knowledge Mr. Russell is presumably put-
ting to scrutiny, since habits are connected with familiar common-
sense objects rather than with those brief, atomized events which
are to be recorded in the primary language. Is there any reason
why linguistic habits should be regarded as less reliable in connec-
tion with words applied to common-sense objects than when words
are applied to atomic qualities— especially since the very appre-
hension of qualities as atomic is perhaps debatable? But I am no
less puzzled by the relevance for Mr. Russell’s problem of his claim
that certain utterances are caused by certain occurrences; for if
this claim is taken as a criterion for determining whether the utter-
ances are true, an infinite regress seems unavoidable. Thus;, to
determine whether “this is black” is true, we should have to ask
whether a black object causes it, and subsequently, in order to
answer this question, whether other utterances made in the course
of this process are true, and therefore whether certain objects cause
these utterances, and so on indefinitely. In any case, we could not
decide what words do belong to the object-language without first
developing an adequate science which would discriminate and
identify the causes of words, and we could not therefore construct
a primary language without using those very assumptions which

[ 198 ] Sovereign Reason

the construction of the primary language is supposed to justify.

However that may be, there is one important corollary which
must be noted concerning the character of Mr. Russell’s object-
language. He excludes from it all the familiar logical words such
as “not,” “or,” “some,” “all,” etc., since these words according
to him “presuppose the existence of language” and are needed only
to express psychological attitudes and are not needed to indicate
facts. Thus, “or” is taken to express experiences of hesitation and
choice (p. 102), while “not” is related only to the act of judging
(p. 89). This view requires some comments.

I can not help suspecting that Mr. Russell is badly confused in
maintaining that logical words like “or” presuppose the existence
of a language in the sense he intends. For it is surely not the case
that these words are meta-linguistic ones, like “true” and “false,”
which presuppose a language in any other sense than the sense in
which any word presupposes a language. For example, in the
sentence “If I am hot then I perspire,” the logical connective “if-
then” does not stand between the names of two sentences, but is
used to connect the two “facts” denoted by the two sentences “I
am hot” and “I perspire”; and in this respect it functions like the
two words “I” and “perspire” to convey information about mat-
ters of fact which are not linguistic or psychological. In tins con-
text, at any rate, the logical connective is used to indicate.

If logical words simply express psychological attitudes, how can
Mr. Russell avoid psychologizing all of logic^ Is the proposition
“This is black or this is not black” a contingent truth, referring to
facts of psychology The triumph of Prmcipta Mathematica over
psychologizing logics would then have been a Pyrrhic victory in-
deed. On this question, however, Mr. Russell is regrettably silent.
But is it the case that disjunctions airways express simply psycho-
logical attitudes.^ Mr. Russell himself calls attention to such a
term as “child” which is equivalent to “boy or girl,” and which
when used in sentences is normally employed to indicate and not
merely to express; and other expressions in English, even color-
names like “yellow,” may be used in some contexts as abbrevia-
tions for disjunctions understood as logical sums rather than as
expressions of hesitation. Smce Mr. Russell insists that questions
of psychology must be kept clear from questions of logic, it is not

Mr, Russell on Meaning aiid Truth [ 199 1

clear why every usage of logical words must be excluded from the
primary language.

Moreover, since a material conditional of the form “If A then
B” is logically equivalent to a disjunction, Mr. Russell’s primary
language can contain no conditional statements either. He does
maintain, however, that “the non-mental world can be completely
described without the use of any logical words’ (p. 114). Con-
sequently, since words like “malleable,” “mass,” and other terms
employed in the various sciences require to be defined with the
help of conditionals—as independent evidence seems to show— the
non-mental world can not, on Mr. Russell’s view, contain the prop-
erties designated by such words, so that they must therefore be
interpreted as expressing psychological facts. Is it not surpnsing
how much Mr. Russell is able to know about the constitution of the
physical world? The reader must, however, decide for himself
whether he will place greater greater credence in the conclusions
of Mr. Russell’s epistemology, or in the conclusions of various sci-
ences, resting on public evidence, that such properties do occur
in the non-mental world.

It appears, therefore, that the price at which Mr. Russell’s
theory of knowledge must be bought is not only a psychologized
logic but a psychologized physics as well. On his view propositions
embodying the most certain and adequate knowledge must refer to
absolutely determinate, absolutely specific atomic events; and the
specificity of the evidence is for him not a function of the context
in which evidence is required but is fixed antecedently for all con-
texts. It IS perhaps not surprising that the only subject-matter he
can find to which his evidential statements will refer is the subject-
matter of individual psychology. And yet on one occasion Mr.
Russell admits that “the difference between a statement which is
disjunctive and one which is not does not consist in any difference
in the state of affairs which would make it true, but solely .in the
question whether the difference between the possibilities which
our statement leaves open is interesting to us or not” (p. 107). If
this admission is taken seriously does it not suggest a clear alterna-
tive to his oflficial view> Does it not raise the question whether the
atomic character of statements is not, after ail, relative to the type
of problem requiring solution, that the degree of specificity which

[ 200 ] Sovereign Reason

the relevant evidence must satisfy is a function of the particular
task at hand, and that the assumption of propositions which are
atomic intrinsically is a gratuitous requirement of any actual in-
quiry?

3 -

Mr. Russell’s conception of perceptual Judgments as caused by
experiences requires him to assume that there exists immediate
knowledge through the senses. This view is formulated by him
repeatedly in many ways. Thus he declares that basic propositions
must be known independently of inference and must be such that
'‘the perceptive occurrence which gives the cause is considered to
give the reason for believing the basic proposition” (p. 172).
Again, if basic propositions are examined from ‘‘within” and not
in terms of their causes, he maintains that

every empirical proposition is based upon one or more sensible occur-
rences that were noticed when they occurred, or immediately after, while
they still formed part of the speci'ous present. Such occurrences, we shall
say, are “known” when they are noticed. The word “know” has many
meanings, and this is only one of them; but for the purpose of our in-
quiry it is fundamental. (P. 61.)

In this sense of “know,” however, words are not involved, and
Mr. Russell therefore asks how we can “formulate a sentence which
(in a different sense) we ‘know’ to be true in virtue of the occur-
rence” (p. 61). Mr. Russell examines the question whether in
using a language we do not, after all, rely on the effects of repe-
tition and assume a certain universality:

Repetition and universality, in fact^ are of the essence of the matter, for
language consists of habits, habit involves repetition, and repetition can
only be of universals. But in knowledge none of this is necessary, since
we use language, and can use it correcdy, without being aware of the
process by which we acquired it. (P. 393.)

The fundamental issue and its resolution therefore is:

Can anything be learnt, and if so what, from a single experience? . . .
Unless each single observation yields some knowledge, how can a suc-
cession of observations yield knowledge? (P. 395.)

The question as to whether there is “immediate knowledge” is
always in danger of becoming a terminological one, and I do not
wish to discuss it in this form. I shall ask instead whether the

Mr. Russell on Meaning and Truth [ 201 ]

problems raised by Mr. Russell in this context are resolved by him,
and whether he has adequately established the existence of imme-
diate knowledge in his sense of the term.

Mr. Russell’s discussion of the question how we can formulate
a sentence vyhich we “know” to be true in virtue of the occurrence
which we notice (p. 61 ff), seems to me to yield only a truistic
answer. For in the end Mr. Russell tells us nothing more than that
the sentence “I am hot,” for example, expresses what I notice—
namely, that I am hot. On the other hand, his view that the per-
ceptive occurrence which is the cause of a basic proposition also
gives the reason for believing it to be true, is a perfectly futile
criterion for determining w^hether a proposition is true. Does Mr.
Russell believe that we can ascertain by immediate inspection what
the causes of our utterances are? This seems to be a large factual
claim indeed, and it would be interesting to know what the con-
trolled experiments are which establish it. But if he does not
believe this, must we first determine by independent means what
the causes of our beliefs are before we can say whether they are
true^ In that case, however, I do not see how we can avoid an
obvious infinite regress. The tacit assumption underlying Mr.
Russell’s discussion is that we can be more certain of a proposition
the more directly it is connected by causal relations with what we
claim to know; but I do not know any good reason why this should
be so.

Mr. Russell declares that only such propositions ought to be
regarded as basic which are “about particular occurrences which,
after a critical scrutiny, we still believe independently of any ex-
traneous evidence in their favor” (p. 187). Such a scrutiny in-
volves restriction of attention to the “momentary perception as the
least questionable thing in our experience” (p. 189); nevertheless,
“in order to study momentary visual space, it is necessary to keep
the eyes motionless and attend to things near the periphery as well
as the center of the field of vision” (p. 433, my italics). I fail to
see, however, that if such operations must be performed in order to
obtain basic propositions, how Mr. Russell can avoid using assump-
tions and cognitive commitments which are not directly presented
as true in a momentary perception, assumptions in terms of which
his scrutiny is made. Surely we can not control our eyes without
taking for granted common-sense objects and thus assuming die

[ 202 ] Sovereign Reason

validity of inductive generalizations and inferences. Surely we
can not scrutinize without analyzing, as Mr. Russell himself admits
(p. 422), and we can not analyze without regarding some things
as relevant and others as not, and thereby falling back upon gen-
eral principles which are not established in a single momentary
experience.

The type of argument Mr. Russell offers, to show that a single
observation must yield some knowledge, could equally well estab-
lish the conclusion that every constituent note in a melody must
itself be a melody if there is to be any melody at all; and if Mr.
Russell were not writing epistemology, he would dismiss it as an
instance of the fallacy of division. But a more serious diflSculty is
that on Mr. Russell’s view there is no room whatsoever for the
criticism of truth-claims in the case of perceptual judgments, since
the distinction between truth and falsity in this case is “to be
defined by their causes'*'^ rather than by their effects (p. 410). The
ultimate factual premises are therefore such that no one of them
can be rendered in any degree probable or improbable by any
number of others, the sole reason for believing them being always
the events which cause them. It is therefore not altogether surpris-
ing to find Mr. Russell abandoning “empiricism,” as he conceives it,
as an untenable standpoint, and being driven to accept a number of
non-demonstrative principles of inference which experience can
neither confirm nor refute, but which are nevertheless in some cases
to be regarded as more certain than the evidence of the senses
(p. 398). I believe, however, that the source of Mr. Russell’s diffi-
culties is his taking the distinction between what is prior and what
posterior in knowledge as fixed once for all. He does not entertain
the possibility that what is prior in one inquiry may be posterior
in another context, and that the self-corrective procedure of in-
quiry shuttles systematically between general principles and ob-
servations, correcting each in the light of the other. On the contrary,
as he himself explains, his analysis is controlled by the method of
Cartesian doubt and by the desire to find a fixed set of propositions
which would constitute the ultimate foundation for all other beliefs.
This is indeed the conception of “linear Justification” e indent in
the Aristotelian theory of science, in w^hich all propositions hang
like links in a chain from an unshakable first link. Since Mr. Russell
regards Aristotle as one of the four great calamities in the history

Mr. Russell on Meaning and Truth [ 203 ]

of philosophy, he seems to be in very bad company indeed. This
is not the place to develop or even to state adequately an alterna-
tive conception of “justification” for beliefs; but I submit that the
beliefs held on the basis of modem scientific inquiry are neither
acquired nor organized nor justified in the manner Mr. Russell
thinks It is essential for accredited knowledge to be.

There is one final difficulty in Mr. Russell’s reconstraction of
knowledge. He explicitly declares that perhaps no actual proposi-
tions quite fulfill the conditions required for basic propositions,
although he maintains that “pure perceptive propositions remain
a limit to which we can approach indefinitely, and the nearer we
approach them the smaller the risk of error” (p. 190). But this
admission seems to me to jeopardize seriously his entire undertak-
ing. For Mr. Russell constructed his primary language and pos-
tulated basic propositions in order to establish with their help the
linkage between the facts of the non-verbal, non-mental world and
the propositions accepted on the basis of cmde experience or scien-
tific inquiry. To the extent, however, that the existence of such
basic propositions is not established, and if, moreover, the evidence
available from independent sources is accepted as showing that no
such propositions exist, Mr. Russell has failed in the task he had set
for himself. For in that case he has simply constructed an abstract
linguistic system the application of which to matters of fact raises
precisely the same sort of logical issues as are germane to the use
of the language of every-day discourse and science. This point,
which I regard as quite central in this matter, may be made plainer
by another illustration. Let us suppose it is a problem to show
how a system of mathematics, developed on the assumption of a
continuous field of variation, can be used to formulate the facts
in a world of discrete objects; then the problem is clearly not
solved if we constnict another system of mathematics, also depend-
ing on assumptions of continuity, which is to mediate between the
first system and the specified subject-matter. As I see it, Mr. Rus-
sell’s epistemological construction likewise aims to mediate between
the facts of the world and scientific propositions; but the assump-
tions he finds it necessary to make raise the very questions which
that construction was intended to solve.

[ 204]

Sovereign Reason

4 -

With the help of his specially constructed object-language Mr.
Russell believes he can resolve a number of issues which have
plagued the traditional theory of knowledge and metaphysics.
There is space to consider only some of his findings.

I. He insists that statements like “this is red” must not be con-
strued as subject-predicate propositions; for if they are so under-
stood “this” would be a name for an unknowable substance. Since
he holds that “what would commonly be called a 'thing’ is nothing
but a bundle of co-existing quahties such as redness, hardness,
etc.,” he construes the above statement as being of the form “red-
ness is here” (p. 120). Nevertheless, nowhere in the present book
does Mr. Russell show in a general way how things are to be
analyzed in the indicated manner— unless one regards the use of
the metaphor “bundle” as performing this task. The difficulties in
the way of giving such an analysis on a phenomenalistic basis are
well known, and I believe it is correct to say that no satisfactory
analysis is known which makes possible the elimination of thing-
names from every context. The difficulties are certainly not di-
minished if with Mr. Russell we exclude logical words from the
primary language. How can sentences containing thing-names be
replaced by equivalent sentences containing only object- words, if
the relations between qualities (such as are usually formulated by
conditional sentences) in terms of which “things” may conceivably
be defined are after all not relations between those qualities^

The analysis of things as bundles of qualities requires Mr. Russell
to give a definition of “place.” This he does by associating a pair
of angular coordinates with each specific quality as it occurs in
perceptual space, where the angular coordinates are themselves to
be regarded as qualities (p. 122). It is not clear, however, in what
sense angular coordinates are directly apprehended qualities; for
the coordinates are presumably some type of number (if not, in
what sense are they coordinates.^), and at the very minimum they
will have to be introduced by stipulating some order among quali-
ties. Can such an ordering be performed in the momentary specious
present.^ And if not, can angular coordinates be specified without
using those very “common-sense” objects which it is the task of
Mr. Russell to analyze into bundles of qualities? He admits that

Mr. Russell on Meaning and Truth [ 205 ]

the angular coordinates of latitude and longitude in “physical
space” are not directly observed qualities, but insists nevertheless
that “they are definable m terms of qualities” so that it is “a harm-
less avoidance of circumlocution to call them qualities” (p. 124).
It is not clear what Mr. Russell means by “define”; but if he means
that “latitude” and “longitude” can be replaced in every context
by names of directly experienced qualities, his statement can be
accepted only on faith, since he gives no clue as to how this is to
be done.

2. Mr. Russell has much to say on how sentences indicate, and
is particularly concerned with the question “How can I think of
things that I do not experience?” (p. 274). His views briefly stated
are somewhat as follows: When the verbal expression of a belief
involves no apparent variables, what is expressed and what is
indicated are identical. But when a sentence “involves” a variable,
its relation to what it indicates is remote and indirect, and it refers
to something beyond what is directly experienced. What is indi-
cated by such a sentence, however, can not be stated in the primary
language, since we do not have a proper name for something out-
side experience (p. 278). Thus, when I say “this dog is ten years
old,” what I experience is a canoid patch of color, and I am
making a statement about an unexperienced something (the phys-
ical dog) which stands in a certain relation to the canoid patch
of color and is also ten years old. Hence the sentence “this dog is
ten years old” turns out to “involve” an apparent variable, since
it must be rendered as “there is 2 l c such that it is identical with the
cause of the canoid patch of color and is ten years old.” If we had
a proper name, say for the unexperienced something— which
of course is impossible— this existential sentence would indicate
that which makes ''A is ten years old” true (p. 279). Mr. Russell
also seems to think that this analysis shows how we can think of
things we do not experience (p. 282).

Mr. Russell’s argument is difficult to follow, and I am not clear
as to w^hat he thinks he has established. Taken quite strictly, the
sentence “this dog is ten years old” surely does not contain an
apparent variable, and the issue then is just what Mr. Russell
means when he says that it nevertheless “involves” one. He may
simply mean that a sentence of the form “There is an x such that x
is ten years old” follows from the sentence “This dog is ten years

[ 2o6 ] Sovereign Reason

old,” which surely is the case for many languages though not neces-
sarily for all; but this fact can not be used to prove that the thing
said to exist does not inhabit the same realm as the canoid patch of
color. Such a consequence would be vahd only if we antecedently
accept Mr. Russell’s theory of perceptual and physical spaces.
Moreover, the above two sentences are not logically equivalent, for
the second does not follow from the first; and yet Mr. Russell gives
the impression that the first sentence formulates an analysis of
what is said by the second. Nor do I see how Mr. Russell has an-
swered ‘his question about how we can think of things we do not
experience in any way other than trivially: for all I find him saying
is that we simply can think of things that are not being experienced.
By transforming a sentence without variables into a sentence with
variables, the relation of the latter to what it indicates is no less
a problem (if it is a problem) than the relation of the former to
what it formulates.

3. Mr. Russell discusses the nature of truth and its relation to
knowledge, and after disposing of alternatives accepts a cor-
respondence theory of truth. He distinguishes between an epis-
temological and a logical version of the correspondence theory.
According to the former, the correspondence is between a propo-
sition and an experience; according to the latter it is between a
proposition and a fact. The important difference between these
two versions is that while on the former a proposition is neither
true nor false if there is no evidence for it, on the latter every
proposition is either true or false, so that there must be a fact,
whether it is observed or not, corresponding to one member of
every pair of contradictory propositions (p. 364). More specifi-
cally, on the epistemological theory a true basic sentence cor-
responds to an experience or expresses an experience, where
'‘corresponds” and “expresses” are to be defined behavioristically.
Sentences which are not basic are “probable” if they stand in
certain (unspecified) syntactical relations to basic sentences (p.
3<S6). On the logical theory, a sentence is verifiable (and thus
presumably corresponds to a fact) if it is either epistemologically
basic or stands in certain (unspecified) syntactical relations to
such basic sentences. However, on this theory unverifiable sen-
tences will be true if they correspond (in some unspecified way)
with facts, where “fact” is taken as an undefined term. Thus, if

Mr. Russell on Meaning and Truth [ 207 ]

we call those sentences “data” which express and indicate experi-
enced facts, verifiable sentences will be those which are so related
syntactically to data as to make them deducible from data. Hence
true sentences are those which either indicate facts or have the
same syntactical relations to sentences indicating facts which veri-
fiable sentences have to data (p. 367). Since Mr. Russell finally
accepts the logical version of the correspondence theory, he must
maintain that verifiable sentences are a proper sub-class of true
sentences and that a “proposition may be true although no method
exists for discovering that it is so” (p. 361).

However, in spite of his long discussion of the correspondence
theory, no clear view emerges as to what this correspondence
is. Mr. Russell assures us that the correspondence between basic
propositions and facts must be specified causally; but we are left
in essential obscurity as to the nature of the correspondence in the
case of propositions involving variables. He has nothing to say
concerning the syntactical relations in virtue of which a proposi-
tion is said to be “probable” relative to basic propositions; and
he does not even suggest what bearing “probability” would have
upon the problems of inductive procedures if the term were
defined on the basis of syntax alone. He maintains that by re-
taining the principle of excluded middle he requires the “meta-
physical assumption” that there are “facts” corresponding either
to a sentence or to its negative; but since “facts” are introduced
to save a principle and are not otherwise identified, and since on
his own analysis this principle does not describe anything in the
non-verbal and non-mental world (for it contains logical words),
it is something of a mystery how such a procedure can yield
metaphysical conclusions. It is possible, and I think for many
purposes highly desirable, to stipulate such conventions for the
use of the term “truth” that as a consequence a proposition may
be true even if “no method exists of discovering that it is so.” On
the other hand, many empiricists who take their point of de-
parture from the procedures of science are ready to admit that
for such a sense of “truth” there is no general method for discov-
ering whether a proposition is true. But they would insist, and to
my mind rightly so, that while this sense of truth may specify the
ideal goal of inquiry and thus serve as a norm to it, it is not
directly relevant for the admittedly different issue as to how

[ 2o8 ] Sovereign Reason

reliable beliefs are to be obtained or as to whether the methods
of bringing evidence to bear upon a proposition are integral to
an understanding of what the proposition asserts.

4. Mr. Russell’s final problem is whether anything, and if so
what, can be inferred from the structure of language as to the
structure of the world. But I think he compromises his problem
from the very start by insisting that smce common-day language
is not sufficiently precise the question can be raised only for an
‘"artificial logical language” (p. 415). For how is this logical
language to be constructed^ Does it have to be constructed on the
basis of a prior study of what does exist in the non-verbal worlds
If it does, what is the point of constructing such a language, since
this prior study will then determine just what the structure of the
language must be^ In this case we would hardly regard as valu-
able any “inference” we might make about the structure of the
world from the structure of the language. But if such a prior study
does not have to be undertaken, how can the question be decided
except on the basis of an antecedent— and therefore arbitrary-
theory as to what exists^

However that may be, Mr. Russell maintains that there is a
“discoverable relation between the structure of sentences and the
structures of the occurrences to which the sentences refer” (p.
429), Here are some of his findings: If a proposition contains no
variables, it can not have more than one verifier; if a number of
subject-predicate statements expressing judgments of perception
have the same subject, they will have the same verifier, namely,
what is designated by the subject; if a number of such propositions
have the same predicate, the verifiers all have a “common part,”
namely, what the predicate designates (p. 431). These results are
disappointing, to say the least. They appear to be simply the
analytical consequences of the semantical rules governing the con-
struction of the sentences in question: that a sentence without
variables, for example, has only one verifier, is just what was
stipulated as to the circumstances under which a sentence is to
be viewed as involving a variable. And on the crucial question
whether from the structure of one sentence (however “structure”
may be defined) we can infer anything about the structure of its
verifier, Mr. Russell is disappointingly silent.

Mr. Russell on Meaning and Truth [ 209 ]

However, Mr. Russell does maintain that there seems to be no
escape from admitting relations as parts of the non-linguistic con-
stitution of the world, since, for example, similarity can not be
explained away as belonging only to speech (p. 434). I fail to
see, however, how the study of language alone (and in Mr. Rus-
sell’s case It IS the study of just one artificial language) can >ield
this conclusion. Have we proved that a certain relation occurs in
the world because we are unable to eliminate a certain relation-
word from a given language^ Does not such a proof require the
submission of relevant empirical or factual evidence^ I strongly
suspect that Mr. Russell can produce a non-verbal rabbit from his
verbal hat only because he has taken care to bring the animal into
the room.

In any event, Mr. Russell rejects a complete metaphysical scep-
ticism, and maintains that “partly by means of the study of syntax,
we can arrive at considerable knowledge concerning the structure
of the world” (p. 438). In one very obvious sense this is surely
the case: few will disagree with him if his thesis is that “by means
of syntax” we can establish relations of deducibility betv^een state-
ments and thus make it possible to learn something about the
structure of the world by examimng the derived conclusions in
the light of empirical evidence. But so interpreted Mr. Russell’s
claim can hardly be “the goal” of his long book. On the other
hand, whether his claim is valid in any other sense than this one is
difficult to say; for he has not formulated a single proposition about
the structure of the world which he has unmistakably obtained
from the study of the structure of language alone.

Mr. Russell’s book suggests to me that the phoenix is perhaps
not a mythological bird after all, and that its secret name is
“epistemology.” For although the type of inquiry Mr. Russell
pursues has often been pronounced dead by eminent authorities,
it manages to get itself bom anew with unfailing regularity. It is
true that in Mr. Russell’s book it comes to life again adorned with
strange plumage borrowed from current logical terminology; but
it is unmistakably the same old bird and carries on in familiar
ways. When so many excellent hands have failed in curtailing the
charmed life of the creature, it is reasonable to resign oneself to its
continued existence. In this review, however, I have tried to riiow

[ 210 ] Sovereign Reason

that Mr. Russell’s book contributes little if anything to our under-
standing of the operations of language, of the conditions of mean-
ingful discourse, or of the actual procedures involved in validating
claims to knowledge. And if I have understood his book aright,
it seems highly probable to me that the phoenix is not the bird of
Minerva,

i2

The Basis

of Human Knowledge

Shortly before his departure from this country in 1944, Ber-
txand Russell expressed his intention to round out his career in
philosophy with what he hoped would be his most important
book. He declared that while most of his life had been devoted to
the foundations of mathematics and the analysis of deductive in-
ference, these subjects were in his opimon only of secondary
significance. The paramount problems of philosophy, he believed,
are concerned with the clarification of “non-demonstrative” argu-
ments, whose premises imply their conclusions only with some
degree of probability rather than with rigorous necessity. It is
arguments of this type that play commanding roles in the aiffairs
of life as well as in controlled scientific inquiry; and the great
“scandal of philosophy” is often said to consist in the fact that
the principles underlying them are still obscure and debatable.
To make explicit these principles, and to exhibit the assumptions
required to establish their validity, were the problems to which
Russell planned to address his next book*

[ 211 1

[212] Sovereign Reason

Human Knowledge^ is the realization of RusselFs aim. It con-
tains the fullest account he has ever given of his views on probable
inference, and on the justification of knowledge that is claimed
to be objective. But the book contains more than this. Russell
was somewhat less than accurate in characterizing his long career
in philosophy as having been concerned mainly with mathematical
logic. On the contrary, he has been intensely preoccupied with
central issues in epistemology for almost two score years. A by
no means negligible value of the present book lies in its presenta-
tion, in systematic and perhaps final form, of analyses of special
questions in theory of knowledge with which Russell has long
been identified— questions ranging from problems of language and
meaning, to issues connected with space, time, and causality. There
have been shifts in the details of his philosophy both in emphasis
and substance. Perhaps the most important of these, especially in
reference to the argument of the present volume, is his qualified
acceptance of what he used to recommend as the “supreme maxim
of scientific philosophizing.” According to this maxim, since infer-
ences to unobservable objects are always precarious, they ought
to be replaced by the entirely safe device of defining such sup-
posed objects in terms of directly experienced data. Russell now
believes that science cannot dispense with such inferences and
has abandoned his earlier phenomenalism. Nevertheless, Russell’s
present account of the nature of knowledge does not diflFer essen-
tially from the doctrines to which his readers have become accus-
tomed. And in any case, the central problem of the book— the
justification of scientific knowledge— is a direct consequence of
the approach to the theory of knowledge he has been developing
for several decades.

The logical starting-point of Russell’s discussion is the assump-
tion that if anything is to be known by inference, some things
must be known directly and without inference. But for him what
we know directly is inherently mental, private, and subjective;
and his task is to show how, from the fragmentary data of sensa-
tion, genuine knowledge of the objective world can be obtained.
Moreover, while the evidence for science comes from common-
sense— the view according to which the objects of our experience

I. Htmian Kno'wledge: Its Scope and Limits, By Bertrand Russell. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1948. $5.00.

The Basis of Human Knowledge [ 213 ]

really do possess the qualities they appear to possess— Russell main-
tains that science proves common-sense to be false; roses are not
really red, nor is the sun really hot and bright. What, then, is the
warrantable content of scientific propositions, and how can we
warrant them as valid?

Now it is evident that the conclusions of science cannot be
deduced by strict logic from the data of direct experience; and
if science is to be possible, various principles of non-demonstra-
tive inference must therefore be accepted. However, these prin-
ciples enable us to obtain objective knowledge only of abstract
structures. The objective qualities of things— if indeed they have
any— are therefore hidden from us. Furthermore, Russell maintains
that these principles of inference are warranted only on condi-
tion that the world possesses certain general characteristics; and
the climax of his analysis consists in enumerating and specifying
the assumptions which, if true, are sufficient to justify scientific
inference. On the other hand, these ultimate postulates of science
cannot in turn be justified with the help of the usual methods of
experimental science, since according to Russell scientific method
can be shown to be valid only if we grant the truth of these pos-
tulates. Experience can confirm these ultimate assumptions, but
it can neither prove them nor make them probable; and yet with-
out knowing them to be true we can have no rational basis for
our belief in science. Russell is thus driven to the conclusion that
the postulates of scientific inference must be known in some
extra-scientific fashion, so that empiricism as a theory of knowledge
is found in the end to be inadequate. “Either we know something
independently of experience, or science is moonshine.”

As always, Russell develops his arguments with refreshing
vigor and bold but responsible ingenuity, and his detailed dis-
cussion of special issues will undoubtedly revitalize professional
thinking on these subjects. Nevertheless, at least two major diffi-
culties will prevent some of his readers from accepting his main
argument. In the first place, Russell assumes, in the company of a
long line of distinguished philosophers, that all inferential knowl-
edge must be based on knowledge that is both immediate and pri-
vate. However, a careful examination of his examples of direct
knowledge raises fundamental doubts as to whether anything is
known in this way. For his examples, as well as his over-all analyas:.

[ 2 14 ] Sovereign Reason

do not settle the question whether the alleged data of direct appre-
hension are logically pri?mtivess Russell’s theory requires them
to be— or whether the cognitive apprehension of those data is not
actually contingent upon prior inferential processes and upon
acquired modes of organic behavior. It is certainly not a matter
of direct knowledge whether some specific item (for example,
my seeing a flash of lightning) is known immediately or only by
inference; and a considerate body of objective knowledge must
be assumed when one attempts to establish whether a given datum
of experience is logically primitive or involves inference. There is
therefore ground for suspicion that the alleged necessity for basing
all inferential knowledge on knowledge that is inherently private
and subjective, is the dialectical necessity generated by Russell’s
framework of analysis, rather than the inescapable outcome of an
independent inquiry into the circumstances under which knowl-
edge is obtained. But if this is so, the relevance of much of his
reconstruction of scientific knowledge is placed m serious jeopardy.

The second difficulty to which reference has been made is
connected with Russell’s central problem of justifymg non-demon-
strative inferences. Everyone will agree that we do not possess
demonstrative knowledge of many things (for example, that the
earth is a flattened sphere) which is nevertheless beyond reason-
able doubt. In such cases, the evidence for what we claim to know
is not sufficient for logically deducing the asserted conclusion,
though it is sufficient for accepting the conclusion without serious
risk of error. Now what is one to understand by the demand that
such knowledge be justified? If the demand is so conceived that
the conclusions of non-demonstrative inferences must be shown
to be logically necessary consequences of premises known to be
true, then it is obvious that no claim to objective knowledge can
ever be justified— unless assumptions are introduced which must
be known independently of experience. However, the impossi-
bility of satisfying the demand without adopting assumptions of
this sort does not prove that we can have no warranted knowledge
except by abandoning empiricism. The impossibility simply calls
attention to the fact that the demand is an inappropriate one. Why
should we accept for non-demonstrative arguments standards of
validity rightly required for strictly deductive ones? Now, indeed,
Russell formally disavows the idea of seeking a deductive justifica-

The Basis of Human Knowledge [215]

tion for scientific inference. Nevertheless, his actual analysis is
based squarely on a conception of “justification” that coincides
with the one he nominally rejects. For he introduces postulates of
scientific inference which must be known independently of experi-
ence, precisely because he wants to prove deductively that non-
demonstrative inferences are valid. But if this idea is surrendered
as hopeless because misguided, the fact that science employs such
postulates as Russell mentions no longer requires to be interpreted
as showing the limits of empiricism. Indeed, in adopting that in-
terpretation Russell exhibits himself as operating, malgre lui, from
the intellectual premises of traditional rationalism. On the con-
trary, those postulates can be intelligibly conceived as rules war-
ranted by their matter-of-fact success in ordering experience. They
are known to be true, not independently of experience, but on the
basis of the same sort of empirical evidence that serves as the
foundation for warranted knowledge throughout science.

Russell has not settled the question he proposed to resolve in
this book. None the less, disagreement with his analyses— even dis-
agreement with his major thesis— constitutes no bar to profound
admiration for Russell’s devotion to philosophy as a rational dis-
cipline, and for the scope and penetration of his discussion. “Hu-
man Knowledge” is an impressive and stimulating intellectual
adventure, written in masterly prose by a master of contemporary
thought.

iS

Eddington’s Philosophy of Physical Science

1 .

Thb BREAK WITH the familiar qualities of our everyday world,
which modern science since Kepler and Galileo has introduced,
has been accentuated by the recent developments in physics. Pro-
fessor Eddington in this book^ gives an account for the lay reader
of the most striking of these developments, and argues for a re-
interpretation of the place of the world of science and the world
of daily experience in the scheme of reality. His conclusion is
that the subject matter of physics is only a partial aspect of some-
thing wider, that mind, endowed with “freedom,” is necessary to
mediate between the realm of physical concepts and “actuality,”

I. The Nature of the Physical World, by A. S. Eddington. (Macmillan,
rozS.) $3.75.

[ znS ]

Eddington^ s Philosophy of Physical Science [ 217 ]

and that the intrinsic nature of this actuality is spiritual and akin
to consciousness.

Eddington’s philosophic kit is loaded with ideas that seem to
be inherited from a darker philosophic age, and important use is
made of them with no effort at their critical evaluation. It is a
dogma with Eddington that the quahties we commonly associate
with things are a mental product, that our daily experience is an
illusion (p. xii). It is a dogma with him that knowledge is never
of things external to us, but of certain associated qualities occur-
ring in the brain, and that the steps of the inference to the external
world exactly reverse the steps of the physical transmission which
brought the information (pp. 270, 278). From these premises it
follows that the world of physics is the “real” world, although it
is only the structure of the real world that science obtains, since
the intrinsic quality of things (with a solitary exception in the
case of our own ego) is an inscrutable somewhat not known to
us (p. 254).

It is for such reasons that Eddington finds the world of physics
symbolical or abstract— symbolical, indeed, not of the things of
daily experience (which have the status of appearance), but of the
inner essences of this appearance. It is plausible to believe, how-
ever, that had he kept clear the distinction between objects of
knowledge and the physical conditions or correlates of knowledge,
he would have never arrived at this metaphysical dualism.

To the confounding of this distinction Eddington adds some
others. Symbols have a reference beyond themselves, and at the
same time symbols have specific characters of their own. Now
there seems no reason in calling the world of physics symbolic if
we are never permitted to know what the symbols stand for. The
moves in a chess game may be symbolic of army manoeuvres, and
the numerals in a book may be symbolic of counting; but if we
never know what the moves in chess or the numerals stand for, it
is not as symbols that they are studied since their referents do not
determine the course of the inquiry. Either the referents of the
world of physics do condition the symbolism, and then we know
what they are, or physics is not symbolic. However, “knowledge”
is a word with many meanings for Eddington: sometimes It means
the possession or enjoyment of sensory and affective qualities;
sometimes it means the po^ession of the representative or sign

[ 2i8 ] Sovereign Reason

function of qualities which are then not always “known” in the
j&rst sense. If one assumes the dogma that only the immediate is
real, and if one takes knowledge in the second sense, it is easy,
therefore, to argue that the symbolic character of knowledge makes
it incapable of grasping reality. Nevertheless, it seems permissible
to retort that knowledge, when it is taken as the inferential func-
tion, is symbolic as well as adequate to grasp reality: the psycho-
physical earners of meanings are not like the meanings they carry,
nor are the meanings hke things; but the meanings are meanings
of things and symbolize things in the sense that they denote types
of experimentally obtainable reactions between things.

Eddmgton’s difficulties with these matters come to a head in his
treatment of change of entropy as symbolic of the irreversibility
of time (pp. 88 ff.). Color for him is a quality purely mental, not
an ingredient of the real world of electro-magnetic waves. But the
dynamic character of time, of “becoming,” he insists is a genuine
quality of nature, even though the physical conditions for the
recognition of this quality seem to be the same as those for the
recognition of any other. To save “becoming” for nature, Edding-
ton, consistently enough, must suppose that in this case the nerve
mechanism does not intervene and that the dynamical character of
time, grown suspiciously substantial for a relativist (cf. p. 97,
where we are told of the “moving on” of time), is observed not
through the sense organs but by a private door of the mind. Mind
turns out to be something with physical properties dwelling in
the body (cf. p. 31 1). Ordinarily there is a double symbolism in
Eddington’s system. Color is something that occurs in the mind,
but is symbolic or equivalent in consciousness to the electro-mag-
netic waves. Secondly, these waves have a structure which is known
but which is nevertheless symbolic of qualities not “known” and
unknowable. If in the case of “becoming” this dualism vanishes it
is because “I grasp the notion of becoming because I myself be-
come. It is the innermost Ego of all which is and becomes^'' (p. 97).

In spite of Eddington’s clear perception that nature is something
richer than physics officially declares, he persists in confounding
the subject matter of physics with the data of the physicist. His
argument is that since all of our scientific information is summed
up in measures, and since the mezsmt-numbers^ as such, offer no
ground for making qualitative distinctions in nature, no such dis-

Eddingtoffs Philosophy of Physical Science [ 219 ]

tinctions exist for science. But while it is true that at a certain
level of investigation all that the scientist may use are the measure-
numbers and be indifferent as to how they are obtained, surely a
philosophy of science cannot stop at that level (if indeed it were
even possible for science to do so). It is only when the locus of
those measure-numbers is discovered in certain qualitative con-
tinuities, familiar enough in our common experience, that the
predictive power of science becomes intelligible. It is adopting a
very narrow behaviorism to say that “two tons is the reading of
the pointer when the elephant is placed on a weighing machine,*’
since an adequate statement of what a pointer reading is involves
just those qualities which had been supposed excluded.

Eddington is bent upon showing that the characteristic features
of the world of physics are introduced by Mind (with a capital):
“ultimately it is the mind that decides what is lumber— what part
of our building will shadow the things of common experience, and
which has no such counterpart” (p. 235). However, his failure to
indicate in what contexts such selections are made makes his ac-
count very unilluminating. In one sense, everything is decided by
mind, since deciding is something that only a mind can do. But
the force of Eddington’s insistence upon the truistic character of
physical laws is gone if one remembers that decision and choice
can arise only when subject matter possesses traits which may be
chosen. To say that the prominence of conservation laws is due
to the mind’s demand for permanence is doubtless important; some
things are conserved only because other things are not, and if we
study the conserved things we certainly select. But if we were to
study the things which are not conserved, as we sometimes do, we
would be exercising selection also. Since the mind is alnrays se-
lective, no light is thrown upon the metaphysical status of any
entities by pointing out that they are selected. The relevant ques-
tion, the only one of value, is why or in what context the selection
is made. Moreover, the thesis that the laws of field-physics are
only truisms is a bad pun. The argument is that concepts like
matter and energy obey these laws only because matter and
energy have been so defined as to obey them. On this argument,
every equation, for example, would be a truism, because its roots
when they are found identically satisfy it upon substitution- But
the truism appears only ujxin a condition; and the condition is

[ 2 20 ] Sovereign Reason

just that one which enables us to say that “the sky is blue” without
“sky” and “blue” being identical.

The last four chapters of the book are an argument for iden-
tifying the unknown intrinsic natures of sub-atomic entities with
qualities akin to mind. The argument is similar to Schopenhauer’s
identification of the thing-in-itself with the will. Finally, there
is a defense of the qualities intuited by the mystic as being genuine
qualities of nature. If the foregoing analysis is at all correct Ed-
dington has no right to his conclusions.

2 .

Without covering all the ground traversed by his earlier philo-
sophical writings, the present volume**^ contains the essentials of
Eddington’s familiar interpretation of science— but with not even
a shred of comfort for his many critics in the form of retractions
from his previously expressed views. Indeed, Eddington is more
confident than ever that philosophical idealism is the logical out-
come of contemporary physics, and that the “matter” of which
physics yields structural knowledge is something akin to conscious-
ness. He is now convinced that quantum laws no less than the
laws of molar physics are “mind-made,” and that the “objective
laws of governance” (if any such laws there be and which at one
time he believed were supplied by quantum theory) mu^ be sought
in types of behavior not accounted for in the present scheme of
physical science— in biology, psychology, life, consciousness, and
spirit. The distinctive feature of the present book is its frank
epistemological approach, with its insistence that the theory of
knowledge should be the point of departure for understanding
the nature of the physical world. It maintains that the “funda-
mental laws” of nature are subjective, that they can be deduced
from purely epistemological considerations with the consequence
that these laws are both truistic and necessary, and that our sen-
sory and intellectual equipment imposes these laws upon the ma-
terials directly accessible for study. This, in brief, is Eddington’s
philosophy of “selective subjectivism,” which without neglecting
Berkeley acknowledges its allegiance more definitely to Kant.

2, The Fhilosophy of Physical Science. Sir Arthur Eddington. (Tamer
Lectures, 1958.) New York: The Macmillan CJompany. 1939. ix + 230 pp.
$2 .50.

Eddington’s Philosophy of Physical Science [ 221 ]

However, although Eddington has not been convinced by his
critics, his critics are not likely to find the present version of his
philosophy more plausible than the previous ones. He insists that
the physical universe must be identified as the world “described”
by the science of physics (p. i), and also that epistemological con-
clusions must be subjected to the same kind of observational con-
trol as are the hypotheses of physics (p. 5). But if physics and
epistemology are admitted to have the same logical status, why
should the deliverances of the latter be taken to be more pene-
trating and fundamental than those of the former, and why should
the “reality” of the physical world be more disputable than is
the “reality” of the operations of thought (pp. 3, 18 ff., 23)?
Again, what is the sense of calling the “fundamental laws” of na-
ture subjective if, as it turns out, selective subjectivism is a per-
vasive feature of all knowledge^* (Eddington does not illustrate
these laws clearly, but declares that they are the “differential
equations determining the progress of the universe,” p. 63.) For
even the features of experience said to be objective (such as
the manifestations of consciousness) must also be the outcome of
the selective subjectivism of our sensory and intellectual equip-
ment (cf. pp. 114, 148, 195, 217). If the “objective laws of gov-
ernance” would also have to be presented to us via our subjective
forms of thought (p. 66), the distinction between subjective and
objective has no longer an ascertainable sense, and the terms do
not continue to carry the meanings initially associated with them.
Eddington maintains that it is not necessarily a disproof of the
a priori and subjective character of physical laws that they are
clearly illustrated by prominent features of the familiar world
(p. 133). But if that is so, what could disprove this claim, and
why isn’t Eddington’s philosophy of selective subjectivism just a
necessary truism, because of the definitions of his terms, with the
consequence that it too is only “subjective”? In any case, he can
not avoid the paradox of having to impugn the “reality” and
the objectivity of our physical knowledge, just because we must
think in order to know, only to accept the objective reality of
philosophical idealism. Physical knowledge presupposes reflective
thought and therefore selection. Does Eddington believe thsa: the
knowledge claimed by idealism does not? But perhai® that is ex-
actly the not altogether flattering import of his reminder that ‘Sve

[ 22 2 ] Sovereign Reason

just can not help being brainy, and must try to make the best of
it” (p. 195).

That Eddington’s philosophy of science is a consequence of a
systematic misuse of terms has been urged against him before
(notably by Miss Stebbing, whom he dismisses with a quip), and
can be easily established. Thus, to begin with small points, the
physical world which was initially identified as that which is “de-
scribed” by our physical knowledge, is presently said to be an as-
sociation of pointer-readings (pp. loo-ioi) presented as the con-
tents of an individual consciousness (p. 195). But the physical
universe identified in the first way is a universe containing gravi-
tating bodies, accelerated particles, electrical currents, and the
like, and it is only by a sleight of hand that these can be said to
be pointer-readings in consciousness. Again, what student of rela-
tivity will recognize the essence of that theory to consist in the
fact that “we observe only relations between physical entities”
(p. 31)? Is it very surprising if now the theory of relativity can
be “deduced” from the forms of thought? And even though Ed-
dington follows respectable authorities in saying it, can anyone
who has ever employed the Newtonian gravitational formula in
solving a mechanical problem honestly characterize it as being
simply a summary statement of what we have observed (p. 44)^

Eddington maintains that we can be certain of the universal
validity of the “fundamental laws” of nature because we ourselves
impose them upon experience. But even if the formal deduction
of these laws from the forms of thought is granted (in the present
book Eddington supplies only the barest outline of the alleged
deduction), it is soon evident that this claim means much less than
what it at first sight appears to mean. For he readily admits that
these laws tell us nothing about the “special facts” of nature—
such facts as that the density of matter in many regions of the
universe is vanishingly small, or that the earth is spherical. In
fact, the interpretation of the “fundamental laws” as laws for
familiar physical objects can not be made on a priori grounds, as
Eddington acknowledges in so many words (p. 134), and the
boundary conditions for the differential equations must admittedly
be supplied by experimental physics (p. 63). It thus turns out
that the “fundamental laws” of nature are simply uninterpreted
formulae, and that the a priori deduction that Eddington claims

Eddington^ s Philosophy of Physical Science [223]

for them is nothing other than the deduction of theorems in a
branch of pure mathematics. But it is one thing to make the claim
that pure mathematics consists in the deduction of consequences
from freely chosen postulates, and quite another thing to maintain
that what has been deduced is a law in the positive science of
physics.

Eddington’s claim to be able to deduce the numerical values
of certain “constants of nature” must be adjudged in a similar
way. It is certainly possible to determine a priori the value of
constants: for example, to calculate theoretically the value of the
angle-sum of a triangle in Euclidean demonstrative geometry. If
then we employ Euclidean geometry as the theory of physical
measurement, we may be quite certain that every physical tnangle
will have its angle-sum equal to two right angles. But issues of
empirical fact are not thereby eliminated— they are simply shifted
to another place. Whether a given physical configuration is in-
deed a Euclidean triangle remains a question which involves not
merely issues of pure mathematics but also of experimental phys-
ics. In general, therefore, in a systematic exposition of a science
it is possible to begin with general principles and to show that all
the known facts fit into the framework of the theory. But a sys-
tem of abstract formulae is not a theory of physics, until its terms
are interpreted as referring at some point to observational ma-
terial; and it is not an adequate theory, unless it provides solu-
tions for problems which can be identified without using that
theory as the sole mode of identification. For if a theory always
determines whether something claimed to be an observational test
of the theory is “really” an observation, it is not a physical theory
at all, and there is no point whatsoever in conducting experiments
for testing it. Not the least puzzling feature of Eddington’s views
is that they are not obviously compatible with the facts that phys-
ics has a history and that experiments continue to be made.

It is now a matter of common knowledge that what appear to
be laws of physics may sometimes be “disguised definitions” or
“conventions”— even though at one time these laws were empiri-
cal generalizations. Such “disguised definitions” are best con-
strued as demands or postulates, in terms of which subject-matter
is analyzed and the system of physical knowledge organized. To
the extent that Eddington emphasizes this feature of theoretical

[ 2 24 ] Sovereign Reason

physics, and to the extent that he recognizes that such postulates
could in principle be retained no matter what the “special facts”
may be, his philosophy of science has a sound core. But to build
a philosophy simply on this is to build on a half-truth. For in
the first place, the conventional status of a principle is a function
of the particular organization of physical science at a given time.
To say that a law is a convention requires supplementation by a
specification of its function in the system of physics— -where the
system of physics as a vohole is not accepted on definitional grounds
alone. But in the second place, the introduction of a postulate or
“disguised definition” is usually made on the tacit assumption
that there are in fact measurable properties of bodies which sat-
isfy the conditions stipulated by the postulate. Thus, the prin-
ciple of the invariance of mechanical laws with respect to certain
transformations may be construed as a convention. But its fer-
tility depends on the fact that bodies do have measurable traits
and relations which satisfy the indicated conditions, and that these
properties (e.g., mass, velocity, etc.), are those in terms of which
the behavior of things under discussion can be understood and
predicted. It is easy enough to institute conventions, it is not so
easy to set up such conventions which will be fruitful in the solu-
tion of specific problems. And it is pertinent to note that Edding-
ton himself admits that while the “fundamental laws” are “com-
pulsory,” there is no compulsion that actual observations shall
satisfy them (p. 20).

It is admittedly important to determine which propositions of
the sciences are asserted on factual or contingent grounds, and
which are definitory and postulational. But the analysis has not
been carried far enough if it terminates in the conclusion that
such postulates are adopted simply because of the inherent struc-
ture of thought or if it neglects the factual basis of theoretical sci-
ence. There is just one way to understand without illusion what
is the import of the methodological principles of a science— and
that is by exhibiting their identifiable functions in inquiry. The
source of Eddington’s defects as a philosopher of science can be
plausibly located in his refusal to perform such an analysis.

Probability

and the Theory of Knowledge

Irofessor Reichenbach’s writings have repeatedly called atten-
tion. to the imporant role which probability statements play in all
inquiry, and he has made amply clear that no philosophy of science
can be regarded as adequate which does not square its accounts
with the problems of probable inference. Recently he has brought
together in convenient form^ many reflections on the methodoh
ogy of science familiar to readers of his earlier works, and at the
same time he has set himself the task of solving many well-known
problems of epistemology in terms of his theory of probability.
His latest book is therefore of great interest, both because of the
light it throws on Professor Reichenbach^s own views and because
it reveals the power and limitations of one approach to the profa-

I, Experience md Fredictionf Chicago, 1958. All page references, unless
otherwise indicated, are to this book.

[ 225 1

[ 2 26 ] Sovereign Reason

lems of science. In particular, while it does not add to the details
of his theory of probability worked out elsewhere, the applica-
tions Professor Reichenbach now makes of it supply fresh clues
for judging its import and adequacy. The object of the present
essay, therefore, is to expound a number of his views on probabil-
ity and epistemology, with a view to examining his conclusions
and their relevance to the problems he aims to resolve. The dis-
cussion will try to determine whether several features of his present
views do not follow from assumptions which he has not suffi-
ciently considered; whether his logical constructions do not create
new puzzles; and whether a different starting-point should not be
taken if the clarification of scientific concepts and procedures, to
which Professor Reichenbach’s devotion is as unexcelled as it is
well known, is to be successfully conducted.

I.

At the risk of repeating familiar things, it will be best to begin
with a brief exposition of Professor Reichenbach’s general views
on probability. They are distinguished by three features* his
claim that a univocal interpretation can be given to all probability
statements in terms of limits of relative frequencies; his introduc-
tion of the infinitely gradated property weight to characterize
propositions; and his consequent proposal to replace the allegedly
inadequate two-valued logic of truth and falsity by the infinite-
valued logic of probability or weights. These features must now
be explained in outline.

Professor Reichenbach takes as the basic type of probability
statements those with the form illustrated by: “For every cor-
related pair XiYi (Xi being a man undergoing medical examination
at a given time and yi being that man a year later), Xi is tubercu-
lar implies with degree of probability p that yi is dead.” He main-
tains that the triadic relation probability implication is a general-
ization of Russell’s formal implication^ illustrated by “For every
X, X is diagnosed as tubercular implies that x dies within a year.”
However, Professor Reichenbach interprets the expression “implies
with degree of probability p” as follows: Let hj^ be the relative
frequency in the first n terms of the series with which the j’s die
when the correlated x’s are tubercular, and suppose hn converges
to a limit p zs n increases without limit; p is then the degree of

Probability and the Theory of Knowledge [ 227 ]

the probability implication. Professor Reichenbach believes that
such an interpretation can always be given to probability state-
ments, and maintains that it is the only suitable and adequate one.
He also declares that probability statements can be formulated so
as to express indifferently relations between classes of “events” (or
happenings) or between classes of propositions.

It immediately follows that the attribution of a degree of prob-
ability literally to a single happening or a sm^e proposition is
devoid of sense. However, statements which seem to assign prob-
abilities to single happenings do occur and seem to make good
sense— as when it is said that it is more probable that Napoleon was
ill at the battle of Leipzig than that Caspar Hauser was the son
of a prince. Some students have therefore concluded that in such
cases a different interpretation must be assigned to the term “prob-
able” than is required on the frequency view, and they have
consequently held that the term is not univocaL But Professor
Reichenbach insists that such a “disparity” view of probabihty is
not necessary. Thus, in the example cited, he regards the differ-
ence in probabilities assigned to the two propositions as arising
from the difference in the kind of documents which support the
two statements; one kind is more reliable because its statements
are confirmed with a greater relative frequency than those in the
second kind.

For reasons which will be considered presently, no factual state-
ments, according to Professor Reichenbach, can be known to be
true (or false). Thus, we do not know that the next toss with a
given die will show a prime number of dots uppermost. Never-
theless, we would be willing to wager on that happening because
the probability associated with the class of such happenings is
high (2/3 in this case). This probability, though strictly appli-
cable to classes of happenings (or propositions), may be taken as
the measure of the goodness of a wager on a single happening;
when so used, the probability functions as the weight of the prop-
osition about this single occurrence. Hence the possible numerical
values of the weight are the real numbers in the interval o to /
inclusively; and according to Profe^r Reichenbach, since the
truth or falsity of factual propositions can not be determined in
practice, the weights of propositions are the practical surrogates
of their truth-values. This is a point of fundamental importance in

[ 228 ] Sovereign Reason

Professor Reichenbach’s analysis. He maintains that if we assign
weights to propositions (in his sense of “weight”), our acceptance
of some propositions and rejection of others “can be justified”
because in acting upon propositions with high weights “we shall
have in the long run the greatest number of successes.” (p. 310)

Because the determination of the truth or falsity of propositions
is not feasible and because we are compelled to operate with them
in terms of their weights, Professor Reichenbach concludes that
a two-valued logic is not a satisfactory instrument for science;
he therefore proposes an infinite-valued logic of probability, of
which the ordinary two-valued logic is claimed to be a specializa-
tion. For the details of this new logic the reader must be referred
to Professor Reichenbach’s writings: ^ its elements are no longer
single propositions but propositionaUsequences^ each containing
an infinite set of propositions and each being associated with a
real number in the interval 0 to z. Professor Reichenbach main-
tains that if this number is interpreted as the limit of the relative
frequency with which members of the sequence are true, we ob-
tain the usual mathematical calculus of probability; while if it is
interpreted as the weight of any of the members of the sequence
we obtain what defenders of the “disparity view” call the logical
concept of probability. His conclusion is, therefore, that the mathe-
matical and logical concepts of probability are structurally identi-
cal, so that the disparity view is demonstrably mistaken (p. 325).
Finally, he develops the idea of probabilities of higher orders, in
terms of which he is able to discuss the probability (and so the
weight) of probability statements themselves. According to Pro-
fessor Reichenbach, general no less than singular statements can
be characterized in terms of weights, and he therefore argues that
scientific theories themselves may be discussed in terms of the
frequency theory of probability.

2.

For lack of space this paper will not be concerned with most of
the details of Professor Reichenbach’s probability theory;^ but it

2. Especially W ahrscheinbchkeitslehre, Leiden, 1935. See also “Ueber
Induktion und Wahrscheinlichkeit ” Erkenntnis^ Bd. V, and “Les fondements
logiques du calcul des probabilites,” Anmles de Hnstitut Henri Poincare^
T. VII.

3. For the sake of completeness, however, I add the following summary of

Probability and the Theory of Knonvledge [ 229 ]

is essential to examine more closely his conception of weight be-
cause of the uses to which he puts it in his discussions of epistemol-
ogy.

It is evident that the w^eight of a proposition is determined in
precisely the same way in which a probability coefficient is ob-
tained. Now probability is defined in terms of the limit of rela-
tive frequencies in infinite series; and it will be therefore obvious
that the numerical value of a probability can not be calculated by
examining a finite number of elements in such series. In other
words, no hypothesis as to what is the probability of some desig-

some obvious difficulties in Professor Reichenbach’s formulation of his system*

a) Probability implication is said to be a generalization of RusselFs formal
implication. This question has been discussed m some detail by Miss Janina
Hosiasson (“La theone des probability est-elle une logique generalist?”,
Actes du Congres International de Philosophie Scienttfique, Pans, 1935, IV)
w ho points out that m at least three distinct senses of “generalization” this is
not the case. Will not therefore Professor Reichenbach indicate in precisely
what sense of the term does he believe his claim is true? He has promised
to reply to this type of cndcism, but at the date of wrinng this reply is
unfortunately not available. But however that may be, his formal calculus is
obviously not sausfactonly formulated, since he does not specify ail the re-
quired rules in terms of which the formalism of probability implication is to
be treated.

b) Professor Reichenbach has recently admitted (Philosophy of Science^
Vol. 5, p. 22) that the many-valued logic as developed in his WahrscheiTtlich-
keitslehre is formulated in the semantical 4 anguage. He claims nonetheless that
die structure of this logic is isomorphic with, the structure of the calculus of
probabihty as formulated in the object-language of science. But he nowhere
gives a proof of this isomorphism, and Dr. C. G. Hempel has recently pointed
out (“On the logical form of probability statements,” Erkenntms^ Bd. VII,
p. 157) that this isomorphism does not in fact obtain. The transition from
one formulation of the calculus to the other, is not, as Professor Reichenbach
apparently believes, simply a matter of “adding quotation marks.”

c) Professor Reichenbach insists that his logic of probability is an “exten-
sional system.” The pomt at issue may be only a verbal one. There^ are,
however, standard definitions of the phrase “extensional logic” in the fitera-
ture, and according to such definitions his system is not extensional. It is not
clear what Professor Reichenbach means by saying that “a relation is inten-
sional if it depends on the intension of the propositions” (Philosophy of
Sciencey Vol. 5, p. 25); in any case “intension” is not a term which can safely
be used in discussing logical foundations without a more careful formulation
of its usage than he gives.

d) Professor Reichenbach claims that his probability io^c is a genuine
many-valued logic,” if propositional-sequeuces rather than ^ngje propositioin
are taken as its elements. However, the logical connectives between prop^i-
tionai-sequences are introduced in terms of the familiar logical connectives
of the two-valued logic (cf. p. 324). It is thetefore not clear why he dmes
that his many-valued systmi is built upon a basic two-valued logic in which
propositions have just two possible truth-values.

[ 230 ] Sovereign Reason

nated property can be either conclusively established or con-
clusively refuted by an inquiry which is necessarily limited to
the examination of a finite quantity of evidence. It therefore fol-
lows that the weight of a proposition can not be definitely estab-
lished by any finite number of observations. Two questions thus
force themselves upon us: i) By what procedure does Professor
Reichenbach propose to assign weights to propositions? 2) In
what way is the weight of a proposition a practical surrogate of
its truth-value?

i) Professor Reichenbach’s answer to the first question requires
a discussion of his Principle of Induction and his theory of higher-
order probabilities. Suppose then that in order to estimate the
probability of getting a head with a coin we toss it n times, and
find that the head turns up m times; the relative frequency of

m

heads in this series of tosses is thus == '“• We do not know

n

that IS the probability of getting a head, but we may “infer”
that it is the limit (or close to the limit). In Professor Reichen-
bach’s terminology, in inferring that hn is the probability we
make a posit or wager ^ without knowing whether the posit is true.
We naturally ask, therefore, what validates this inference. Accord-
ing to him the “justification” is given by the Principle of Induc-
tion, formulated as follows: “For any further prolongation of the
series as far as s events {s > n)^ the relative frequency will remain
within a small interval around h^, f.e., we assume the relation
hn — c hg hn + c,” with the further proviso that there is
such an hn for every c however small (p. 340).

It is evident that this Principle is not demonstrable as a principle
of logic or pure mathematics, and Professor Reichenbach stands
firmly on the ground that it is not apriori either in a rationalistic
or a Kantian sense. How then is the Principle itself to be “justi-
fied”? His answer is ojffered as a solution of Hume’s problem: We
do not know that the Principle is true; but then we do not know
that it is false either. Let us therefore make our posits in accordance
with the Inductive Rule: if is the relative frequency with which
a property occurs in the first n terms of a series, we shall posit
that remains within a narrow interval around hu for every

Probability and the Theory of Knowledge [ 231 1

prolongation of the series to ^ terms.^ Consequently, if the series
has a limit, and if its value is estimated in accordance with this
Rule— care being taken to correct the value of A as we take more
and more terms of the series into account— we have instituted a
necessary (though not a suflScient) condition for obtaining the
value of the limit; for by taking the latest value of fen as the best
value, we are necessarily approximating more and more closely
to the limit if there is one.

Some comments are now in order, a) The above formulation
of the Principle of Induction may be misleading if Professor
Reichenbach’s intent is not made explicit. For example, it is not
true that whenever we toss a coin 100 times in 50 of which heads
come uppermost, the relative frequency of heads will remain in
the interval .50 ± .0001 for every further prolongation of the
series of tosses. If the Principle were taken to imply such a con-
sequence it would clearly be false. What Professor Reichenbach
means is that for every € there is an n such that for every 5* greater
than % fes lies in the interval fen ^ c; but Just what the specific
value of n for which this is true is left undetermined. It is clear
therefore than the Principle asserts nothing more than that the
series in question does have a limit, b) It follows that even if we
make posits in accordance with the Inductive Rule we can not
assert, after no matter how many trials, that we know what the
probability is or, correspondingly, what the weight of a proposi-
tion is. No one is more cognizant of this fact than Professor
Reichenbach. He points out that in positing a specific fe^n as the
approximate value of the limit we are making a ‘‘blind wager,”
because we do not in general know the weight of the proposition
which asserts this value. In preceding according to the Inductive
Rule we are therefore employing a self-corrective method, and
Professor Reichenbach has performed a valuable service in point-
ing this out clearly. But does the introduction of that procedure
answer the problem which led to its introduction^ Are we now
in any better position to say what the weight of any specific prop-
osition is?

Professor Reichenbach’s further discussion involves the use of

4. WahrschemUchkeitslebrey p. 597.

[ 232 ] Sovereign Reasofi

higher-order probabilities and what he calls the method of “con-
catenated induction,” with the help of which blind wagers are
claimed to be converted into appraised wagers. This method is
said to enable us to “supersede the inductive principle in all those
cases in which it would lead us to a false result, or in which it
would lead us too late to the right result” (p. 364). We must
therefore study it in the context of some illustrations of its use
which he offers.

Carbon has not yet been liquefied, although most substances
can be melted if raised to sufficiently high temperatures. Is it
possible, however, to conclude anything about the fusibility of
carbon? Letting “A” stand for the fact that a substance is in a
liquid state at a certain temperature and “A” that it is not,
Professor Reichenbach represents this state of affairs by the fol-
lowing “probability lattice,” in which the letters are ordered from
left to right according to increasing temperatures:

Copper

A

A

A

A

A

Iron

A

A

A

A

A

Carbon

A

A

A

A

A

If an inductive inference is performed from left to right in all but
the last line, the conclusion obtained is that the substances in
question are in a liquid state when above a sufficiently high tem-
perature; while such an inference performed in the last line yields
the conclusion that carbon is not fusible. Each of these induc-
tions is said to be on the “first level.” On the other hand, accord-
ing to Professor Reichenbach, if now an inductive inference is
performed in the vertical direction, it leads to the conclusion that
carbon will melt at some temperature, because all the other sub-
stances do so. This new induction is said to be on the “second
level,” and Professor Reichenbach declares that “this induction
of the second level supersedes an induction of the first level.”
Each first-level induction is a blind wager, which posits that the
limit of the relative frequency of melted states with increase of
temperature equals 2 in all but the last row, and posits 0 for the
final row. The second-level induction, on the other hand, in-
volves counting the relative frequency with which posits of /
occur, and itself posits that the probability of posits of o is vanish-
ingly small. In brief, the second-level induction appraises the

Probability and the Theory of Kno^doledge E ^33 ]

weight of each of the blind first-level posits; and according to it
the proposition that carbon is not fusible has a weight close to zero.

Let us examine Professor Reichenbach’s argument, a) The ob-
ject of the outlined procedure is to enable us to estimate the weights
of propositions. But as he himself emphasizes, the second-level
induction involves a blind wager; and even if we “transform’* it
into an appraised wager by conducting inductions on higher and
higher levels^ new blind wagers are inevitably introduced. In what
way, therefore, are we any better off after carrying through any
number of steps of such a theoretically endless process than before^
as far as determining what the weight of a proposition is? Must
we not always be content with an estimate of a weight without
knowing how good an estimate it is— unless procedures and as-
sumptions not made explicit in the above account are introduced?®

b) In terms of Professor Reichenbach’s procedure, the weight
of the proposition “Copper has a melting-point” is high, because
of the high relative frequency with which statements of the form
“x has a melting point” are found to hold. It follows that if this
relative frequency were small the weight of that proposition would
also be small, even if all the evidence relevant to the behavior of
copper would confirm its having a point of fusion. To take a
similar case. Professor Reichenbach would have to say that “Water

5. Another example given by Professor Reichenbach helps to bring this
out even more clearly. He imagines three urns, containing white and black
balls in the ratios 54 , 54 , and % respectively, but with no indication as to which
urn contains which proportion. An um is now selected, a ball is drawn four
times with replacement after each drawing, and it is discovered that a white
ball has been picked three times. To the question: What is the probability
that in drawing balls from this urn a white one appears^ the answer given is
obtained by using the Inductive Rule. This, however, is a blind wager.
Professor Reichenbach converts it into an appraised wager, and declares that
the probability that this probability is 34 is equal to 27/46. This last number is
a second-level weight, and is said to be greater than die second-level weights
for the bind-wagers on 54 or 54- It is evident that this number is obtained
with the help of Bayes Theorem, though Professor Reichenbach does not
exhibit his method of derivation, on the assumption that the “inidal proba-
bilities” for each um being selected are equal. How does Professor Reichen-
bach “justify” this a^mpnon? The reader is told no more than that^ “fur-
ther posits and posits of the blind ^e” must be made (p. 569); and in the
more detailed exposition of such “justifications” in the WahrscheMichketts-
lehre (§77), blind posits and new assumptions about the irregularity charac-
terizing hypothetically infinite series are explicitly introduced. The farther
one goes along with Professor Reichenbach the more puzzling it becomes
why he regards that the problem of determining a weight is solved by him.

[ 234 ] Sovereign Reason

expands on freezing” has a low weight, because most substances
contract on solidifying. But is “weight” defined as Professor
Reichenbach defines it and which leads to such consequences, a
term for which physicists, or for that matter students of the
methodology of physics, can find a useful application? The con-
trary seems to be the case. Indeed, the grounds we have for be-
lieving in the fusibility of carbon are different from those sug-
gested by the above account; they depend upon the theory of
matter we accept because of the weight of evidejice we have for
it, and from which the fusibility of carbon is a consequence— it
being understood, however, that “the weight of evidence” for the
theory is not to be construed in the way Professor Reichenbach
understands his term “weight.”

c) Professor Reichenbach’s predicate “weight” is the back door
through which he reintroduces, in so many words, the conception
of the probability of a single case, against which— and rightly so—
frequentists have always been up in arms. The discussion thus far
has tried to show that in order to evaluate the weight of one prop-
osition, Professor Reichenbach is required to evaluate the weights
of an infinite series of higher-level statements. But on his premisses,
one must also be prepared to evaluate an infinite series of what
might be called lower-level weights, before a given weight can
be determined. For consider an actual case of estimating a prob-
ability, for example, the probability of a normal coin falling heads.
We must first count the frequency with which heads fall upper-
most in a finite series of throws; we therefore toss a coin on a
given occasion, watch it come to rest, note that the head is upper-
most, and then continue this process. It would seem, therefore,
that we must assert statements Hke “This coin on this occasion
falls heads up.” But according to Professor Reichenbach we can
not be completely certain of the truth of this statement, since it
too possesses a “predictional element”— it possesses for us only a
high weight, sufficiently close to /, so that we may treat it as true
only by schematizing the infinite-valued logic of probability
(p. 327). We are therefore led to ask how this allegedly high
weight is to be determined. The weight Professor Reichenbach has
in mind can not be obtained by regarding the proposition in ques-
tion as a member of the propositional-sequence each element of
which has the form “This coin on occasion x falls heads up”—

Vrobability and the Theory of Knowledge I 235 ]

for then its weight would be 54 and the procedure would be cir-
cular. Its high weight must therefore accrue to it in virtue of its
membership in a diflFerent propositional-sequence. But which one?
Professor Reichenbach is not very confiding on this general point.
Perhaps the one he has in mind is the class of propositions each
of which is a statement by an observer that after the tossed coin
has come to rest the head is noted uppermost; the high weight,
close to of the original statement, would then be the value of a
relative frequency in this class. If now we ask how this ratio is
determined, we must count the frequency with which the ele-
ments of this class are “true”— a procedure which once more in-
volves a “schematization,” since what we call true is again only a
high weight. We are therefore led once more to another proposi-
tional-sequence, and then to another, and so ad infmtum. Even if
the suggested propositional-sequence is not the one Professor
Reichenbach has in mind, the conclusions drawn from this example
would remain unchanged. Does Professor Reichenbach maintain
that his use of the term “weight” formulates what is explicitly or
implicitly done in the sciences and every-day inquiry, when we
try to “justify” the acceptance of propositions which are to be
used for action? Or is he proposing that such a procedure be insti-
tuted as the only one which would “justify” the acceptance or
rejection of propositions? If so, does he think that it is a practicable
one?

2 ) We must therefore turn to the second question— in what way
is the weight of a proposition a practical surrogate of its truth-
value? The gravamen of Professor Reichenbach’s objection to the
two-valued logic of truth and falsity is that it is not possible to
verify completely and finally a proposition as true or as false. But
in order to make clear his position, he distinguishes three senses of
“possibility.” Technical possibility involves the matter of fact
human ability at a given time to institute and control certain pro-
cedures; physical possibility involves compatibility with the laws
of nature, regardless of human power; logical possibility involves
no more than sheer logical consistency. Technical po^ibility does
not enter into the discussion of complete verification; on the other
hand, while Professor Reichenbach admits that final determination
of a truth-value is logically possible, he also believe that the speci-
fication of truth-values in terms of such a possibility is not “in

[ 236 ] Sovereign Reason

agreement with physics” (p, 42) and should be rejected, because
it would permit many sentences to be meaningful which we would
normally wish to exclude from being so. What about the physical
possibility of complete verification? In the first place, some sen-
tences are obviously not so verifiable, because of the character of
the human organism: for example, propositions about a remote
future or a remote past, propositions about the internal constitu-
tion of the stars, and all universal propositions, including proba-
bility statements interpreted in terms of limits of relative frequencies
(pp. 40-42); and in the second place, Professor Reichenbach makes
clear that even singular statements about the observable present
are not completely verifiable either, because they all involve a
“predictional component” so that in the context of the system of
statements in which they occur they imply an indefinitely large
class of consequences about things not directly observable (pp.
50 if., 85). In brief, therefore, it is not possible to determine with
finality the truth-value of propositions. This is the reason offered
why we must pay attention to properties of propositions other
than their truth-value, if we are going to take propositions as a
basis for our actions (p. 66); and Professor Reichenbach maintains
that the weight of propositions is just the property which is rele-
vant for our purpose.

He makes it perfectly plain that he regards weight as a property
which it is physically possible to determine (p. 54) ; and his entire
system sinks or swims with this contention. But if the previous
discussion does not completely misunderstand him, it is evident
that the weight of a proposition is no more determinable than is
its truth-value. Professor Reichenbach declares that statements
about single events at a definite spatio-temporal position might
be supposed to be two-valued, but that as a matter of fact “it turns
out that a determination remains a mere fiction as we never are
able to determine the truth-value in question. All that we can do
is make an assumption about the truth-value, based on observa-
tion.”^ Is not Professor Reichenbach in exactly the same position
with respect to the weight of such a proposition? Is he not there-
fore compelled by his own criteria to regard as a “mere fiction”
his infinite-valued logic? It may be granted to him, if for no other

6. Philosophy of Science^ VoL 5, p. 28.

Probability and the Theory of Knowledge [ 237 ]

reason than for the sake of the argument, that the truth-value of a
proposition can not be determined with finality. Will he not also
grant that the weight can not be so determined?’^ In any case,
there seems no way of escaping the conclusion that weighty con-
ceived as Professor Reichenbach does, is no practical surrogate for
truth and falsity. He believes that his theory of weights and higher
order probabilities solves the problem of the application of the
probability calculus to finite classes of elements, if ‘‘probability”
is defined in terms of limits in infinite series. I would not like to
be understood as minimizing the great importance and mgenuity
of Professor Reichenbach’s contributions to the calculus of prob-
ability; but I fail to see why a problem should be considered solved
if the proposed solution involves difficulties of increasing com-
plexity and obscurity.

3 -

Is it not relevant to ask, therefore, whether the impasse to which
Professor Reichenbach’s scheme brings us is not a consequence of
his assumption that all statements of probability are to be inter-
preted in exactly the same way^ He is on solid ground when he
maintains that many such statements require to be interpreted in
the way he indicates. However, he also has his eye on the im-
portant fact that all statements in empirical inquiry are theoreti-
cally corrigible by further inquiry, so that statements accepted as

7 Professor Reichenbach might reply that although we can not know the
weight, we can wager on it. Surely. But why can not a like reply be made to
his charge that we can not know the truth-value of a proposition^ Professor
Reichenbach seems to me not infrequently to confuse the distinction between
a proposition having a truth-value and our knowmg what this truth-value is.
The real trouble in his discussion seems to me to rest on the fact that he has
so defined many of his terms that it is not possible to apply them; in par-
ticular, “knowledge,” “true,” and “weight” are so used by him that as a
consequence we can never know the truth or the weight of any factual state-
ment whatsoever- Are we not doing some violence to the language when we
are compelled to say that we never know anything? There would be no point
in having the term “know” if we consistendy used it that way.

Incidentally, Professor Reichenbach explains that while truth involves a
relation between a proposition and a fact, weights are a function of the state
of our knowledge and may vary with the latter (p. 27). But the weight of
a proposition, as he defines this term, is as much an “objective” property as
truth is, and has nothing to do with the state of our knowledge. Has not
Professor Reichenbach sHpped into a different conception of weight, at least
at this point, from the one he officially avows, and is he not criticizing the
two-valued logic from the stand-point of this unofficial view^

[ 238 ] Sovereign Reason

true at one time may subsequently be rejected. But he expresses
this fact by saying that “all statements are probable,” and does not
seriously entertain the possibility that this expression may be
equivocal. Against those who maintain that this is in fact the case,
he declares that those who favor a “disparity” conception of prob-
ability violate commonly accepted “principles of empiricism,” in
particular the principle that all empirical statements be “verifiable”
(p. 304). This charge, however, is a gross begging of the question;
it involves the gratitous assumption that what some adherents of
the “disparity view” call vo eight of evidence or degree of con-
frmation must conform to the same formal conditions of calcula-
tion as does probability conceived as a relative frequency (cf. p.
305)— so that as a consequence the only genuine alternative to his
own views would be the theory of Laplace and his successors.

In other words, Professor Reichenbach does not seem to be
sensitive to the distinction between the (limit of the) relative fre-
quency with which sentences of a certain form are true in an
infinite class of such sentences, and the relative frequency with
which certain consequences of a sentence are true in a finite class
of such consequences. The former yields the frequency interpre-
tation of probability statements, which he favors; the latter does
not. Without taking the requisite space to develop this second dis-
tinction, which leads to the still insufficiently analyzed notion of
degree of confirmation,® it is worth while to examine Professor
Reichenbach’s discussion of the problem of induction and the the-
ory of meaning, in order to exhibit the bearing of such a distinction
on his conclusions.

i) Professor Reichenbach declares that the aim of induction is
“to find series of events whose frequency of occurrence converges
toward a limit,” even if we have no guaranty that this can be
attained (p. 350),® The process of induction will therefore termi-

8. This point is briefly discussed in Frinciples of the Theory of Frobabilityy
Jntermtioml Encyclopedia of Unified Science^ Vol. I, No. 6.

9. This formulation seems to me very dubious indeed, unless it is intended
as a nominal definition of “induction.” Just what is the series of events for
which we are supposed to be searching when we look for the individual who
committed a crime? Again, when Kepler studied Tycho Brahe’s tables on the
positions of Mars, what series of events was he looking for? In this case, cer-
tainly, most physicists would agree that Kepler was looking for a formula
(or law), such that the motion of the planet could be specified by it. It is,
however, not essential for the purposes of the present discussion to enter
into this point at greater length.

frob ability and the Theory of Knowledge [ 239 ]

nate in conclusions which go beyond the known facts, although
the regulative principle in the construction of such conclusions
must be “the postulate of the best predictive character” (p. 376).
The problem of induction, accordmg to Professor Reichenbach, is
to “justify” such conclusions. We must, however, distinguish be-
tween the “context of discovery” and the “context of justifica-
tion.” The former involves questions of the psychology and
sociology of scientific discovery; the latter, which is alone relevant
to the logician of science, “does not regard the processes of think-
ing in their actual occurrence,” and its aim is “to construct justifi-
able sets of operations which can be intercalated between the start-
ing point and the issue of thought processes, replacing the real
intermediate links” (p. 5). The task of epistemology, and of a
theory of induction in particular, is to “replace actual thinking by
such operations as are justifiable, that is, as can be demonstrated as
valid” (p. 7). Such a justification is provided by the Principle of
Induction, because if we draw conclusions in accordance with it
we shall be following “a procedure the continued application of
which must lead to success, if success is possible at all” (p. 377).

One example of the use of this Principle has already been dis-
cussed; let us consider another. According to Professor Reichen-
bach, Galileo’s law for freely falling bodies was inferred to hold
for all cases similar to those in which confirmatory observations
had been made; and Kepler’s law of areas was also inferred to hold
generally from observations on the spatio-temporal positions of
Mars. Finally, Newton’s gravitational theory, which “includes the
observations of both Galileo and Kepler,” made it possible to argue
for the validity of each law not simply on the basis of the ob-
servational material for each law, but on the basis of the joint ob-
servational material for either law. “Newton’s discovery, therefore,
in unifying both theories, involves an increase of certainty for
both of them; it links a more comprehensive body of observational
material together to form one inductive group” (p. 372).

Professor Reichenbach does not develop this point further, and
it is not easy to see how what he says supports his claim of an
“increase of certainty” for the two laws in question. He appar-
ently thinks that because we have made two blind posits on i
being the limit of relative frequency with which each law is con-
firmed, and because each law is derivable from Newton’s theory,

[ 240 ] Sovereign Reason

we are in the position to appraise these posits. But why is it relevant
that the two laws are each derivable from Newton’s theory? Why
should we not form “one inductive group” with the observations
for Galileo’s law and the observations for any other law^ say
Coulomb’s, for which the same posit is made as to the relative
frequency of confirmations^ Professor Reichenbach can not say
that the laws of Galileo and Coulomb have “nothing in common”
—for as he well knows any mathematician can show the contrary.
Alternatively, suppose (what is of course not the case historically)
that observations on falling bodies and planets had led us to a posit
of .80 as the limit of relative frequency with which Galileo’s law
is confirmed and a posit of .60 for Kepler’s law. Why would the
fact that each law is derivable from Newton’s theory increase the
certainty of these inferences? Professor Reichenbach does not ex-
plain such matters. He simply assumes that the “justification” of
every theory consists in assigning to it a weight, estimated by re-
peated application of Inductive Rule. This assumption calls for
some comments.

a) In the first place, it does not seem at all plausible that theories,
e.g., Galileo’s or Newton’s, which would be confirmed in say only
80% of their applications would continue to be considered as ade-
quate. It is of course naive to suppose that a single apparent nega-
tive instance marks a theory as unsatisfactory; every one knows
that a certain range of deviation of observed from expected re-
sults is invariably taken into account when testing a theory. There
is no such thing as an indubitably final refutation of a theory in
the history of science on the basis of isolated negative instances.
But having said this, would any physicist retain a theory if a
single well-constructed negative instance for it were found— to
say nothing of there being an infinity of such exceptions, such a
possibility being still compatible with the weight of the theory
being /? A single negative instance of the kind considered would
be a challenge to alter the theory, to construct and test alternative
theories, and not to conduct further experiments for the sake of
determining what is the limit of the relative frequency of in-
stances confirming the theory in question. On Professor Reichen-
bach s view every observed value which departs from an expected
value, as calculated from a theory, counts as one instance, irre-
spective of whether it falls inside or outside the range of permitted

Probability avd the Theory of Knowledge [ 241 ]

deviations. How can he explain the fact that a single deviation
falling outside such a range counts for more, in the judgment of
workers in the field, than any number of deviations falling inside
the range— especially since the value of the limit of the ratio of
confirming instances can not be affected by a finite number of
disconfirming ones^

b) In citing the power of Newton’s theory to unify and thereby
strengthen the evidence for the laws of Kepler and Galileo, Pro-
fessor Reichenbach has made an important observation. But he
does not seem to have interpreted his own illustration adequately,
and he has not succeeded in showing how the example supports
his theory of induction. It seems to me essential to stress the fact
that each of these laws is derivable from the Newtonian theory,
given suitable initial conditions, so that as a consequence the
(necessarily finite) confirmatory evidence for these laws taken singly
also confirms the Newtonian theory. On the other hand, we judge
the acceptability of the latter in terms of such factors as the num-
ber and variety of the confirmatory instances— in brief, in terms of
the “degree” to which the theory has been put to the test. It fol-
lows that an observation directly confirming Kepler’s law, will
also confirm Newton’s theory, and will therefore confirm Gali-
leo’s law, since an instance confirming a theory also confirms what
is derivable from that theory. This account seems to me straight-
forward though unduly simplified, it involves no tour de force
such as Professor Reichenbach performs, and expresses what seems
to be the procedure of physics, but its cogency depends on not
mistaking “probability” as a relative frequency for “probability’^
as degree of confirmation (i.e., as an indication of the thorough-
ness with which a proposition has been tested.)^®

10. These matters are explained at somewhat fuller length in the work cited
in Note 8. Professor Reichenbach distinguishes between two ways of assign-
ing a probability coefficient to a theory, one of which involves viewing a
theory as a logical product (p. 396) From the point of view of the proposed
distinction between probability and degree of confirmation, his comphcated
and certainly dubious construction is altogether unnecessary.

[In the second edition of his Wahrscheinhchkettslehre which has since
appeared in English {The Theory of Frobabihty, Berkeley and Los Angeles;
University of California Press, 1949), Professor Reichenbach distinguishes, as
he did in earlier publications, between a first-level and a second-level proba-
bility of a general law. The first-level probability is the limit of the relative
frequency with which the singular consequences of the law (in some cases

[ 242 ] Sovereign Reason

c) Professor Reichenbach declares that if we wish to “con-
struct an objective meaning of a term ... we must ask which

meaning we are to ascribe to the term, if the usual usage of the

term is to be justifiable,^^ He illustrates his point by explaining the
meaning of “length of a line” as the ratio of one line to a unit line;

such a meardng “if underlaid to the use of the term in the mouth

of most people, makes their statements justifiable.” Similarly, he
claims that if his interpretation is given to all probability state-

these singular consequences may all be taken to refer to some one object) are
verified. He now considers the objection that on his view a law (e,g., that
ail human beings have hearts) might be assigned a degree of probability close
to one, even though there are a large number of disconfirming instances for
it—in opposmon to what appears standard procedure which would simply
reject the law in such a contingency. He grants the fact that in some cases a
smgle exception to a law would be taken as a “noticeable diminution” of its
degree of probability. But he explains this by maintaining that a universal
statement is simply a “schematization,” involving the substitution for what is
actually a “probabihty-implication” of degree close to one of the more simple
and manageable “all-statement.” Accordingly, “one exception proves that the
strict all-statement is false, and we dishke using an all-statement as a sche-
mattzation if it is known diat the all-statement is false. If a statement is used
as a schematization, it should at least be compatible with the existing ob-
servational evidence to assume that the schematization is verbally true” (p.
436). But I fail to see that this comment meets the point m any manner, it
does not explain why even if no “schematization” is employed and a proba-
bility-implication of high degree is asserted, a single exception or even many
exceptions should be a ground for rejectmg it.

[Professor Reichenbach’s discussion of the second-level probability of gen-
eral statements seems to me no more convincmg than his account of first-
level ones. By the second-level probability of a law he understands the limit
of the relative frequency with which the first-level relative frequencies hold
for a series of objects. For example, “In order to define the probabihty of
the second level and thus the probability of Newton’s law [of gravitation]
in general, not restricted to one test object, we must construct a reference
class by fillmg out the other rows [of the theoretically doubly-infinite lat-
tice] with observations pertaimng to other physical laws. For instance, for
the second row we can use the law of the conservation of energy, for the
third, the law of entropy; and so on. The reference class employed corresponds
to the way in which a scientific theory is actually judged, since confidence in
an individual law of physics is undoubtedly increased by the fact that other
laws, too, have proved to be rehable. Conversely, negative experiences with
some physical laws are regarded as a reason for restricting the validity of
other laws that so far have not been invalidated” (pp. 439-440). However,
unless I completely misunderstand this account, accordmg to it every physical
law should receive the same degree of second-level probability; and if this
conclusion is warranted, it constitutes in my judgment a reductio ad abmrdum
of the proposed interpretation of the probabihty of general statements.

[Professor Reichenbach does not regard as relevant criticisms which allege
that his analyses do not render the intended meamngs of statements ascnbing

Probability and the Theory of Knowledge [ 243]

merits “all our attitude in respect to scientific theories can be
justified.”^^ This is a puzzling rule for determining the meaning
of terms. I had imagined that in attempting to discover what the
terms “curvature of space” means in physics, Professor Reichen-
bach was not aiming at “justifying” the physicist’s use of it, but
at discovering how he does use it. This usage fixes the meaning (or
meanings), and it is not easy to see what it would be like to
“justify” that usage. Unquestionably, many physicists ascribe a
meaning to the term which it does not have; but that it does not
have it is discovered by examining how it is used. Assuming such
a procedure as basic for discovering the meanings of terms, I can
not persuade myself that Professor Reichenbach’s interpretation
of “the probability of a theory” formulates what physicists do
with it or even think about it for the most part.^^ Indeed, he him-
self admits that the probability of theories, in one of the senses he
specifies (i.e., probabilities of the second level), is not yet amenable
to quantitative determination, because a sufficient body of statistics
is not in existence.^^

Let us, however, consider Professor Reichenbach’s one illustra-
tion in which a theory is allegedly assigned a numerical weight,

a degree of probability to a law; for he declares that he does not pretend to
make explicit the meanings actually associated with such locutions, but rather
to state what meanings ought to be associated with them if our words are to
be compatible with our actions (e.g., p. 382), But although he feels entitled
in consequence to dismiss as illicit all non-frequency uses of the word
“probability” which assign a degree of probability to a statement relative to
the available evidence for it, he himself employs a not too dissimilar notion
under the label of the “ground-for-assertion relation” in his discussion of the
Rule of Induction— even if he denies this relation to fall within the province
of the theory of probability and declares it to be “inaccessible to quantitative
measure” (p. 460). What this relation is called is of no consequence, and
whether it can be metricized (as a number of current writers believe) is
perhaps doubtful. But no account of non-demonstrative inference can be
regarded as adequate which fails to assign a central importance to it, and
it surely merits a fuller discussion than Professor Reichenbach is willing to
devote to it,]

11. Philosophy of Science^ Vol. 5, p. 33.

12. Professor Reichenbach suggests that those who do not accept his inter-
pretation should ask physicists not what they mean by the phrase but what
they do when they use it {Philosophy of Science^ Vol. 5 , p. 35 ). Has anyone
really done so on a sufficiently extensive scaled It would certainly be interest-
ing and highly instructive to examine the staustics of the replies obtained,

13. Philosophy of Science^ Vol. 5, p. 41; also p, 399 of the book under dis-
cussion.

[ 244 3 Sovereign Reason

in his sense of the term. He translates the statement “The velocity
of light is 299796 km/sec. with an average error of ±4, or of
0.00 1 5 per cent” as “The probability that the velocity of light
lies between 299792 km/sec. and 299800 km/sec. is 2/3,” and cor-
rectly interprets the latter in terms of relative frequencies. He
then says that from this we can infer “a lower limit for the prob-
ability (on the first level) of Einstein’s hypothesis of the constancy
of the velocity of light.” His conclusion is that “the probability
of Einstein’s hypothesis is greater than 99.99 per cent, if a numeri-
cal range of 0.0052 per cent is admitted for the possible value of
the constant” (p. 398). This is certainly most impressive. But how
are these numerical values obtained? I shall overlook “the transi-
tion from the special value of the constant to the postulate of
constancy in general”^^ which Professor Reichenbach makes, since
it raises a question much too technical to discuss here. As for the
rest, these numbers are calculated with the help of the mathemati-
cal calculus of probability— applied upon sets of numerical meas-
ures obtained under specified conditions of experiment^ when
suitable assumptions are made about the distribution of the meas-
ures. Professor Reichenbach’s figures thus declare that if prescribed
types of measurements are carried out, the magnitudes so obtained
will lie within a fixed interval around a certain number with a speci-
fied relative frequency. But a study of the procedure by which
these figures are obtained reveals nothing relevant for determining
the probability of Einstein’s hypothesis. It may be that Professor
Reichenbach intends his “interpretation” as a proposal to the
physicist to institute certain practices in evaluating theories; it is
most clearly not an account of what the physicist does do.

d) One final point. It is not easy to ascertain what precisely
Professor Reichenbach does mean by “justification,” or what ex-
actly is the force of “valid” in the passage cited toward the begin-
ning of this section. He says that the construction of the Justifying
operations is not to be arbitrary, that “it is bound to actual think-
ing by the postulate of correspondence” (p. 6); and he also says
that the construction of theories must be in accordance with the
postulate of “the best predictive character,” Now a demand for
“justification” is readily understood, if it means that evidence for

14. Ibid, p. 40.

Probability and the Theory of Knowledge [ 245 ]

the theory must be found; such a justification can be given, but
only in terms of the consequences or confirmatory instances of a
theory and the relative completeness with which a theory has been
tested. However, this is not what Professor Reichenbach seems to
have in mind, at least it is not the only thing. Thus, he declares
that

“it cannot be denied that there is likewise an inductive relation which
supports the theory before the consequences are tested. The situation of
the theory in respect to facts before the experimental test is not differ-
ent, in principle, from that after the experimental test. In both cases
there are facts which do not verify the theory, but which confer a
determinate probability on it; this probability may be small before the
test, and great after it. But even before the test there must be facts on
which the theory is based; and there must be, also before the test, a
set of inductive relations leading from the facts to the theory— else the
theory could not be seriously maintained. The set of relations before the
test may be of a very complicated kind, whereas the relations from the
observational material of the test to the theory may be of a rather simple
kind; but in both cases they must be of the inductive type if the adoption
of the theory is to be justifiable.”^®

This and similar passages are a puzzle, and it is not altogether
clear whether Professor Reichenbach is abiding consistently by
his distinction between the context of discovery and that of justi-
fication. It is fairly clear, however, that according to him the facts
upon which a theory is “based,” prior to its being tested experi-
mentally, imply the theory with some degree of probability. In-
deed, what distinguishes a great man of science from lesser people
is that apparently “he sees the inductive relations” while they do
not. But just how are these probability implications to be speci-
fied in terms of relative frequencies^ Is not Professor Reichenbach
flying in the face of our best attested experience as to the historical
genesis of theories? Is it at all plausible to believe that “the facts”
antecedently to the theory being tested can do more than suggest
the theory but without determining its specific form? And inci-
dentally, if the alleged probability implication between the facts
and theory is a relation involving limits of relative frequencies,
how can the probability of a theory be radically altered, as Pro-
fessor Reichenbach admits it may, by the addition of a finite
number of confirming instances? On the other hand, many of his

15. Ibidi pt 37; also p. 382 of the book.

[ 246 ] Sovereign Reason

remarks about the probability of theories become statements of
accredited methodological principles, if we interpret them to be
about degrees of confirmation. Thus, to “justify” a theory will
mean that an appropriate degree of confirmation is to be found,
by marshalling a certain finite quantity of evidence to support it;
to say that a theory has a “probability” before it is experimentally
tested will mean that the “known facts” confirm the theory to
some degree, because the propositions asserting them are connected
with the theory by a chain of derivations; to maintain that the
“probability of a theory” may be made greater by an experimental
test will mean, for example, that an expenment, carried on in
subject-matter qualitatively different from that in which support
has already been found for the theory, will increase the degree of
confirmation. Should not Professor Reichenbach therefore give
some thought to the notion of degree of confirmation? Will he
not contribute his great talents in order to clarify it more fully?

2) The consideration of Professor Reichenbach’s discussion of
meaning must be brief. The theory of meaning is central to em-
pirically oriented philosophies which take their cue from the
procedures of the natural sciences; and at least since Peirce, they
have been occupied with setting up criteria for distinguishing
meaningful statements from those which are not. It is one of the
merits of Professor Reichenbach’s discussion that he recognizes
that the setting up of such criteria is primarily a matter of making
decisions^ involving questions not of truth and falsity in the first
instance, but questions of the practical consequences which fol-
low from making them.

Accepting by and large the standpoint of those who believe
there is some connection between the meaning and the verifiabil-
ity of propositions. Professor Reichenbach first considers what he
calls “the truth-theory” of meaning. According to this view a
proposition is meaningful if and only if it is completely verifiable
as true or false. He points out that such a criterion is very incon-
venient, because it is not physically possible to determine the
truth-values of most statements with finality; hence such a deci-
sion would require us to dismiss as meaningless most of the state-
ments of science. He accordingly proposes a different criterion,
which yields “the probability conception of meaning” and is for-
mulated in terms of the weight of propositions instead of their

Probability and the Theory of Knonvledge [ 247 ]

usual truth-values. On this criterion a proposition has meaning if
and only if it is physically possible to determine for it a weight;
and two propositions have the same meaning if and only if they
obtain the same weight by every possible observation (p. 54).

Is this a suitable criterion? The preceding discussion has shown
that the weight of a proposition can be determined with no greater
success than its truth-value. It follows that Professor Reichenbach’s
probability conception of meaning involves the same undesirable
consequences as does the truth-theory of meaning. Consequently,
if w:e do not wish to classify as meaningless the statements em-
ployed in the sciences, the first part of his criterion must be judged
as inappropriate.

Waiving this point, however, we may next ask whether the
second part of the criterion concerning the sameness of meaning
is adequate for the purposes Professor Reichenbach has in mind.
Now suppose that we are about to toss a normal die and that we
pronounce the following two statements: “This die will fall with
the one-spot uppermost on the next toss,” and “This die will fall
with the five-spot uppermost on the next toss.” Everyone would
agree that these statements predict different things, and that no
criterion of meaning can be regarded as satisfactory which fails
to distinguish between them. But according to the way Professor
Reichenbach assigns weights to such propositions, each of them
has the weight 1/6, because each is a member of a propositional-
sequence in which by hypothesis 1/6 is the limit of the relative
frequency with which propositions having a specified form are
“true.” All possible observations will ascribe the same weight to
them, and they should therefore have the same meaning. The pro-
posed criterion for sameness of meaning thus seems to be inade-
quate.

On the other hand, at least a part of Professor Reichenbach’s
criterion could be saved, if in his formulation “weight” were
interpreted as the degree of confirmation for a proposition. For
what is required of statements in the sciences is that from them,
with the help of the techniques of logic and in conjunction with
other propositions stating suitable initial conditions, other state-
ments be derivable,— so that at least some of these derived prop-
ositions can be controlled by further observations. In brief, what
is required is that statements be confimtable, either positively or

[ 248 ] Sovereign Reason

negatively, by appropriate observations. Accordingly, a suitable
criterion of meaning would seem to be that a proposition be con-
firmable, or alternatively that it be physically possible to assign a
degree of confirmation for the proposition in question. However,
it is not clear how a criterion for sameness of meaning is to be
formulated in terms of “degrees of confirmation,” even if we
assume that such “degreees” are always comparable. What we
should want to say is that two propositions have the same mean-
ing if all propositions derivable from them which can be directly
controlled by observation, receive the same confirmation— i.e., such
derived propositions are either all positively confirmed or all nega-
tively confirmed. But these speculations are obviously hints for
further discussion, and are introduced only for the sake of sug-
gesting that the notion of weight of evidence or degree of con-
firmation seems to be a fruitful though vague idea, well worth
considering as a promising alternative to Professor Reichenbach’s
conception of weight.

4.

I now turn to Professor Reichenbach’s analyses of issues with a
distinctively traditional epistemological flavor. In so far as his
subsequent discussion depends on his theory of probability, the
epistemology he offers falls under the judgment already made upon
that theory. It is worth while, however, to consider his epistemo-
logical reconstruction of the world on its own merits, even if it
should raise old issues of probability theory in a new dress.

i) Professor Reichenbach is not one of those thinkers who dis-
miss the problem of the external world as meaningless, and not
only does he take much pains to defend it as genuine, but he offers
a definite resolution of it. What is the problem, according to him?
The problem is generated, as always, by the search for direct
propositions having absolute certainty. Propositions about “im-
mediately observable facts” (i.e., such “concreta” as chairs and
tables) turn out to be not completely verifiable, because they
involve a predictive element and so are indirect and not absolutely
certain. But, so the argument runs, in order to confirm, at least in
part, such indirect propositions we must finally reach propositions
which are direct. The view Professor Reichenbach first considers
takes these direct propositions to be about tTnpressions, Impres-

Probability and the Theory of Knoioledge [ 249 ]

sions (a term which Professor Reichenbach takes to be synony-
mous with “presentations,” “sensations,” and “sense-data”) are
descnbed as “phenomena occurring within my mind but produced
by physical things outside my mind” (p. 89), impressions are
“events of my personal sphere” as distinct from “the external
world,” they do not have “an independent existence,” and in ob-
serving them “I observe only the impressions produced by” ex-
ternal things on my private world. Since by hypothesis impression
statements alone are absolutely certain, the problem to be dis-
cussed is “How do we know that there is such an external world
outside our private world'” (p. 90). Professor Reichenbach sub-
sequently rejects this hypothesis as to the indubitability of im-
pression statements. He grants it meanwhile for the sake of the
argument, maintains that the problem is a serious one, and claims
to be able to solve it with the help of his theory of probability. I
shall first expound his alleged solution, then argue that it falls
short of being one, and finally claim that the “problem” itself is
not intelligible.

a) Professor Reichenbach’s discussion of the problem is carried
on largely in terms of the following analogy. Imagine a cubical
world with translucent but not transparent sides, and that its
inhabitants note changing shadows upon the walls and ceiling-
shadows which ive know are those of birds flying outside the cube
but which are not observable to those in the interior. These
shadows stand in the same relation to the external birds as do
the private impression to the physical things producing them
(p. 1 15), and the problem to be considered is whether the inhabi-
tants could ever discover that there are things outside their cube.
Professor Reichenbach next supposes that some interior Copernicus
finally establishes correspondences between shadows on the walls
and ceiling, and that he explains these relations by the theory that
the moving shapes are shadows of birds existing outside the cube.
He also supposes that certain positivistic philosophers reject this
hypothesis, declaring it to be a psuedo-statement because the birds
are not accessible to observation, and maintaining therefore that
the meaning of every statement about the birds is the same as the
meaning of sets of statements about the observable shadows. Pro-
fessor Reichenbach finally adjudicates between the disputants.
He declares that if the probability-conception of meaning is ac-

[ 2 50 ] Sovereign Reason

cepted, Copernicus is in the right: for his theory has a “surplus
meaning,” and the weight of the bird-hypothesis is higher than
the weight of the mere-shadow-hypothesis. He admits “that the
observable facts do not furnish a difference as to the absolute
truth or absolute falsehood of the two theories in question; but
the weight conferred on them by the facts observable within the
cube is different” (p. 121); and he also declares that “what is
remarkable here is that the two theories obtain, from the facts
observed within the cube, different weights, although both theo-
ries furnish for future facts within the cube the same weights . .

(p. 124). Finally, he insists that

“Our situation with regard to external things is not essenually differ-
ent from that of the inhabitants of the cubical world with respect to the
birds outside: imagine the surface surrounding that world to contract
until it surrounds only our own body, until it finally and with some
geometrical deformation, becomes identical with the surface of our
body,*— we arrive then at the actual conditions for the construction of
human knowledge, all our information about the world being bound
to the traces which causal processes project from the external diings to
the surface of our body” (p. 154).

Accordingly, the problem of the external world is solved in the
same manner and with the same conclusion as is the predicament
of the cube-inhabitants: the external world has an existence of its
own, independent of our impressions (p. 129 ff.),

b) Professor Reichenbach^s solution hangs upon the validity of
his claim that the bird-hypothesis has a higher weight than the
mere-shadow theory. Unfortunately, he does not explain how this
higher weight can be established, and the only clue he offers is a
reference to Bayes Theorem in the calculus of probability. He
declares that the “backward probabilities” from the observed
facts to the two theories are different, even though the “forward
probabilities” from each theory to the facts are the same, be-
cause of the difference in the initial probabilities of the two
theories (p. 124). The argument thus depends on the possibihty
of assigning probabilities to theories^ in his sense of the phrase;
and reasons have already been advanced why this is not feasible.
Waiving this point, however, let us ask how these initial probabili-
ties are to be determined. Now Professor Reichenbach is unques-
tionably a frequentist in his interpretation of “probability,” and
these initial probabilities must therefore be estimated by counting

probability and the Theory of Kno'wledge [ 251 ]

frequencies in material accessible to those within the cube. But
what sort of frequencies observable within the cube would be
relevant to determine the weight of a theory about things not
accessible? Professor Reichenbach does not explain this, and lack-
ing such an explanation we might rest our case as to his not having
solved the problem until he does so. Let us imagine, however, what
his explanation might be, though we have no assurance that we
read his intent correctly. He might suggest, to put it quite crudely,
that the inhabitants would count how frequently moving figures
on a screen are shadows of objects behind or before a screen, that
the relative frequency with which this is the case is high, and that
therefore by an obvious argument from analogy the bird-hypoth-
esis would have a high weight. But on reflection it becomes appar-
ent that the extrapolation from observed frequencies within the
cube to events inaccessibly outside the cube, assumes the very
point at issue: the existence of an outside to the cube could not
be in question if the argument is to mean anything. For what else
is involved in the supposition that the inhabitants observe shadows
on the walls of their world.^ What would it mean to say that they
are hemmed in by “a wall,” if the wall did not have an outside
as well as an inside^ Having assumed so much of a world outside
their cube, just what is the problem of the external world to the
inhabitants? But without such an assumption, how can the cube-
Copernicus, or Professor Reichenbach, even formulate the prob-
lem^ Imagine some terrestrial “physicist” who propounds a theory
according to which the familiar objects of common-experience
such as tables and chairs, are simply “projections” into our three-
dimensional space from things existing “outside” in an inaccessible
four-dimensional one. What would Professor Reichenbach’s reply
be to such a hypothetical physicist who repeated every one of his
own arguments for the existence of an external world to establish
the existence of such an “external” fourth-dimension^ Would he
not say that such a “theory” can be intelligibly formulated only
if “being external to our space” were given a sense which makes
that outside accessible?

Professor Reichenbach’s argument does not become easier to
understand if we apply it to the problem of inferring an external
world from the “personal sphere” of impressions. For just how
is one to construe the inevitable task of estimating the initial

[ 252 ] Sovereign Reason

probability of the hypothesis of an external world by counting
frequencies within the surface of the human body? I am forced
to conclude, until such time as Professor Reichenbach explains
such matters, that he has not solved the problem he set himself.
Moreover, I wish to indicate briefly that he does not even have a
problem to solve. Impressions are explained to be observable
events ^‘of my personal sphere”; and Professor Reichenbach even
says that knocking a man’s head against a wall is not a good
way of persuading him of the reality of the wall, because what
the man saw was “outside his body” whereas the pain felt was
“inside,” so that his problem as to whether there is something
“outside of himself” is not thereby answered (p. 92). He does not
even hesitate to talk of impressions “being produced” by external
things on the “surface of our body.” I have not been able to
locate any account by him of impressions which does not employ
such terms. But if this language is taken seriously, the formulation
of the problem of the external world involves the assumption of
the existence of such a world. For how otherwise can a distinction
be defined and maintained between inside and outside, mine and
not mine, on the surface and beneath or above the surface, pro-
duced and simply appearing, observed and not observed^ An im-
pression cannot be identified as “private” except in the context of
things which are not private; and a datum of experience cannot
be judged as directly observed except in reference to an organism
which is not such a datum, and whose introduction therefore as-
sumes the external world the existence of which was allegedly put
in question. Without the use of such distinction, however, how
can the problem be formulated?^^

16. Recently Professor E. J. Nelson has formulated the problem in somewhat
different language. “By an external world I mean any particular or system of
particulars, of whatever nature . . . which is not immediately experiencibie.
. . . The problem before us then is this: Is it possible to construct a valid
inductive argument which concludes from phenomenal evidence or data of
experience to the existence of an external world.” Philosophy of Science, VoL
5, p. 238, He does not say in what sense of “ible” the external world is not
to be immediately experiencibie, and his quesuon as it stands is therefore not
sufficiently explicit. But in any case, what is to be understood by “hnmedi-
ateiy”> Does it connote a definite interval of time? If not, how does one go
about determining whether anything is immediately experiencibie? If so, must
not the determination of whether something is immediately experiencibie or
experienced involve other times with respect to which the irrtmediate is de-
fined? And how does Professor Nelson determine whether something is phe-

Probability and the Theory of Knowledge 1^53 ]

2) Professor Reichenbach’s discussion of the problem of the
external world is a tour de force^ almost by his own confession^
and serves merely to exhibit the power of his theory of probability.
For the discussion was generated by the assumption that impres-
sion propositions are absolutely certain. But Professor Reichen-
bach denies that they have this indubitable character, and con-
siders in detail their more dubious epistemic status. We must exam-
ine what he says about them, for his account is by no means clear.

a) His denial that impression propositions are absolutely certain
is predicated upon his denial that “impressions have the character
of observeable facts.” He declares that although he has observed
such concreta as tables and houses, he has never seen his “impres-
sions of these things”, and to elucidate this point he adds that “I
hear tones . . . but I do not hear my hearing of them ... I feel
heat and cold . . . but I do not feel my feeling them” (p. 164). His
conclusion is that the existence of impressions is inferred, so that
impression propositions are indirect.

Before expounding his analysis of the chains of inferences in-
volved, we must pause to overcome our surprise at these pro-
nouncements. Professor Reichenbach discussed the problem of
the external world on the assumption that impressions are observed,
for without it the nature of that problem grows even more mys-
terious. Indeed, the shadows on the walls of the cubical world,
which was oifered as a precise large-scale model of the epistemo-
logical predicament, must certainly be observed if there is to be
any point to that discussion. His denial just cited therefore indi-
cates some obscurity in his use of the word “impression.” On the
one hand, he equates it to such terms as “sense-data” and “repre-
sentations” (p. 165), and because of the use he makes of it in
discussing the problem of the external world it is natural to sup-
pose that it refers to what is seen, heard, or felt So used it is a

nomenal except in terms of the mechanism of the human body and therefore
in terms of something which does not function m that determinaaon as a
datum of experience^ What then is the problem of the external world, if in
order to state it that world seems to be implicitly assumed^

17. In discussing the problem of the knowledge of other minds, Professor
Reichenbach says* “Other people tell us that they also see the red and feel
the heat and taste the sweet; but we never can compare these sensations with
ours, and so we do not know whether they are the same”; and again, “It is
m a certain sense true that impressions of different persons cannot be directly

[ 254 ] Sovereign Reason

bit strange to say that impressions are inferred^ because while
empirical evidence supports the claim that colors, sounds, pains,
etc., are not psychological primitives, they are nonetheless not
inferred but are selected and isolated in analyses undertaken for
definite ends. On the other hand, in the present context Professor
Reichenbach is using the term “impressions” to refer, not to what
is observed, but to the act or internal process of observing. Indeed,
he says “An optical sensation is not observed by a man who sees
things outside his body; it is inferred. The man sees a thing before
him and has a sensation. ... He does not know anything about
its qualities, except that it has a certain correspondence to the
immediate thing he observes. It is an unknown” (p. 237; cf. also
pp. 167, 172). But if this interpretation is consistently given to the
term, just what is the meaning of the “problem” of the external
world and Professor Reichenbach’s “solution” of it? And just
what is the point of his long argument that impressions, in the
second sense indicated, are not observed, and that propositions
about them are not indubitable— since impressions in this sense
are on par with any objects or processes discussed in physics?

b) Let us, however, resume the exposition. If impressions are
not “given,” what is given? According to Professor Reichenbach
what is given are things or states of things (including certain
states of our own bodies); and propositions about them are observa-
tion statements with the maximum of directness. From these
observation statements we then infer the indirect propositions of
physics on the one hand (these are about such things as atoms,
electric currents, and the like), and the indirect impression state-
ments on the other (p. 169). The indirect propositions of physics
have a weight inferior to the observation statements, because the
former have a “surplus meaning” when compared with the latter.
But the impression statements, although indirect, have a weight
superior to the observation statements, because the former have
“less meaning” than the latter (p. 170). Nevertheless, the weights
of impression statements are also less than one.

compared. Imagine a man who sees green when I see red, and red when I see
green— would we ever know this? A mind untrained in philosophy might per-
haps object that the man in question would be in permanent conflict with the
trstffic regulations when driving a motorcar, that he would cross the street at
the red light and stop on the green light— but of course this is thoroughly
false” (p, 248, italics not in the text) . Here the sense of the passage requires
that the italicized words refer to ‘wbat is observed.

Probability and the Theory of Knowledge [ 255 ]

These conclusions about impression statements are certainly
curious, and Professor Reichenbach’s argument for them are no
less so. He first claims that impressions must be "'described” in
terms of physical objects, and that the descriptions take the form
of disjunctive propositions. However, in order to obviate the need
for enumerating the terms of such disjunctions he introduces the
concept of i?mnediate similarity. Thus, the table I observe at one
time may be similar to the table I observe five minutes later “as
far as it concerns only what I see just now,” irrespective of whether
there is a physical identity between the “two tables” (p. 170).
Consequently, an “impression of a flash of lightning” can be de-
scribed by the statement “I had an impression produced by the
beam of a light house, or by another physical object which stands
in the relation of similarity to such a searchlight.” More generally,
Professor Reichenbach constructs certain statements he calls basic.
One kind, called the longer similarity disjunction^ has the form:
“There is the thing a^ or a thing similar to a, or there is no ob-
served physical thing, but only an impression as it would have
been produced by the thing it may be expressed in the self-
explanatory notation: a or S {a) or T{a). A second kind of basic
statement, called the impressiojz form, differs from the preceding
in that an “impression term” also occurs in the first two members
of the disjunction; it may be expressed in the notation: [a and
r(a)] or [S'(^) and r(a)] or F(^)- Omitting some inessentials,
Professor Reichenbach’s argument is as follows: The weight of
the longer similarity disjunction is greater than the weight of its
first member, by a theorem in the calculus of probability. Sec-
ondly, the weight of the impression form is smaller than the
weight of the longer similarity disjunction, again by the calculus;
nevertheless, “we may conceive it as highly probable that there
is always within myself an internal process when I see a thing,
and so the weight of the impression disjunction is not much less
than the weight of the longer similarity disjunction” (p. 174).
Next, by a theorem of formal logic the impression form is equi-
pollent with its own last member. Consequently, the weight of
“f (^)” is greater than the weight of that is, the weight of
the observation statement “There is the thing is smaller than the
weight of the impression statement “I have an impression of the
type produced by aP However, basic statements require a com-

[ 256 ] Sovereign Reason

parison between a present object and a formerly observed one,
so that they involve the reliability of memory which is fallible;
it therefore follows that impression statements are not absolutely
certain (p. 176).

It is difficult to suppose that in this discussion of impression
statements Professor Reichenbach is not shuttling back and forth
between the two senses of ‘‘impressions” indicated above. Can
we readily imagine any one asserting “I have the impression of
a flash of lightning” if he did not mtend to refer to what he
sees but to indicate the occurrence of a physiological process under
his skin? On the other hand, how can we understand the reason
for this complicated argument unless Professor Reichenbach in-
tends such a statement to be about something not observed but
inferred? But however that may be, his argument depends on
some theorems in the calculus of probability, in particular the
theorem that the probability of two alternatives is in general
greater than the probability of either alternative. Now it is evi-
dent that such comparisons can be instituted only if it is assumed
that the magnitudes to be compared exist. Professor Reichenbach
assumes that weights can be assigned to his longer similarity dis-
junctions and therefore to impression statements. But how is one
to go about estimating the weight for such a statement as “There
is only an impression as it would have been produced by a flash
of lightning” (p. 178), where by “impression” is understood either
an inner process or something seen? What is the propositional-
sequence in which such a statement is an element, and how are
the relative frequencies within it to be determined? Professor
Reichenbach offers no help to his puzzled readers, and produces
not one shred of empirical evidence for his contention. Does he
really find it plausible that the weight of an observation statement
about the coincidence of a pointer and a scale-reading is less than
the weight of a proposition about some inner process alleged to
accompany such observations? These inner processes are presum-
ably physiological (cf. p. 180), and must therefore be investi-
gated in a way continuous with the way we study the behavior
of men in China or the structure of binary stars. Is it all reasonable
to assign a privileged epistemic position to propositions about such
inner processes? In many inquiries it is usual to isolate certain
events such as pointer coincidences, and make them the basis for
further inferences because of the reliability of our judgments

Probability and the Theory of Knowledge [ 257 1

about them; but on Professor Reichenbach’s account, such a stand-
ard procedure of the sciences is quite inexplicable. Again, why
does it follow from the fact that memory is in general not in-
fallible, that some particular basic statement has a weight diJffer-
ent from Professor Reichenbach does not say, and an enormous
gap yawns at this point in his argument. His discussion of impres-
sion statements, like his handling of the problem of the external
world, thus seems to be primarily an exercise in the calculus of
probability, and sheds little light on the concrete procedures of
inquiry.

5 -

One final portion of Professor Reichenbach’s epistemology re-
mains to be considered. The preceding discussions, according to
him, have established the following points: that no empirical state-
ments are absolutely verifiable, that to each of them a weight can
be attached which is in general less than and that the observation
statements upon which we base all our knowledge are about con--
cretUy i.e., “the concrete things of daily life” (p. 195). The re-
maining constructive task which he sets himself is to exhibit the
structure of the inferences from such a basis to the various com-
plex objects of physics and physiology. We shall follow him only
over part of his argument, but over a sufficient portion to come to
the heart of his epistemology.

a) Although Professor Reichenbach asserts that the basic observa-
tion statements are about the concrete things of daily experience, he
rapidly disconcerts his readers by first offering a “logical construc-
tion” for such objects in terms of material allegedly more primitive
psychologically. He begins the discussion by distinguishing between
different “kinds of existence.”^® Thus, when at dusk a bush is
mistaken for a man, what we see at the moment we see it has
immediate existence; and when we subsequently discover that it
is no man but a bush, what we then see also has immediate exist-
ence. On the other hand, what is seen in the first instance (i,e.,
the man) has subjective existence only, while what is seen in the
second instance (i.e., the bush) has objective existence.

However, the determination as to whether what is observed has
subjective or objective existence is not a matter for immediate

iS. Professor Reichenbach explains that he will use the term “existence” as
in modern logic in connection with descnpitoTis, not things or mdividuals,
but as will be evident he does not abide by this rule consistently.

[ 258 ] Sovereign Reason

intuition, because objective existence is “a determinate logical
function of subjective existence” (p. 203). How is this distinction
estabhshed^ According to Professor Reichenbach, the world of
immediately existing things is the world of concrete objects around
us, “entering into our knowledge without any intellectual opera-
tions being performed by us.” In this immediate world, said to be
historically and psychologically “original” or primitive, there is
no difference between waking and dreaming, and “everything
exists exactly in the form in which it is observed”; indeed, when-
ever doubts concerning the physical world occur “we go back to
the immediately existing objects, to the concreta, as the most reli-
able facts” (p. 204). On the other hand, we draw inferences from
(propositions about) immediately existing things to other such
things, having the form “If so-and-so, then such-and-such,” some
of which are successful while others are not. Accordingly, things
immediately existing which do not have the consequences they
“normally” have are classified as merely subjective existents— where
normality is specified statistically in terms of a high ratio of suc-
cessful predictions made on the basis of a certain class of immedi-
ate things (i.e., those which are then characterized as having ob-
jective existence) (p. 207). Since the property of being an ob-
jective existent is thus specified statistically, we can never be
absolutely certain that something immediately existing is objective.
Nevertheless, the weight of propositions about the concrete things
of daily life is quite high as a matter of fact, most of the concreta
of daily life are “for us, real beyond every doubt, because they
have stood up to every test ever applied” (p. 210).

The point of these remarks therefore seems to be that proposi-
tions about common-sense objects like chairs and tables, to which
objective existence is generally attributed, are themselves “logical
constructions” out of propositions about immediate existing things.
Such “objects” cannot be judged to be objective existents simply
from the fact that something exists immediately. In other words,
Professor Reichenbach seems to be subscribing to the sound thesis
that prediction of “objectivity” is a case of knowledge but that
the immediate existence or presentation of anyirhing is not; and
there is much in his book which supports his taking such a stand.
Nevertheless, Professor Reichenbach’s position is not unambigu-
ous. Note, for example, his reference to immediate existing objects

Probability and the Theory of Knowledge [ 259 ]

as the most reliable facts, suggesting that immediate existents are
thmgs known or to be known. Note again how simply a problem
of knowledge is apparently generated when we ask what the
concreta are upon which the world is to be constructed as a basis.
These concreta are evidently not the common-sense objects, the
chairs, tables, houses, and thermometers, for as common-sense
objects they are already objective^ and Professor Reichenbach’s
aim is to “logically construct” them out of more primitive stuff.
If, on the other hand, the concreta are immediate existents with a
lifetime only during the moments we observe them (cf. p. 199),
how can they have stood up under repeated tests since as immedi-
ate existents they are by hypothesis incapable of repetition? And
have not the common-sense objects in fact become inaccessible to
observation and knowledge, now that the immediately existing
things (which Professor Reichenbach will presently tell us are
only subjectively existing) are taken to be the appropriate objects
of direct knowledge? There is ground for at least suspicion that
Professor Reichenbach has on his hand the riddles of a presenta-
tional theory of knowledge— suspicions which are permitted to
ripen fully in his discussion of scientific objects.

b) According to him, illata (i.e., scientific objects such as atoms,
electrons, radio waves, and the like) are not concreta because for
physical reasons they cannot acquire immediate existence, al-
though it is not logically impossible that we should see radio
waves “as we see those of light” (p. 215). Nevertheless, we can
infer their objective existence as “independent entities,” though of
course only with probability. Professor Reichenbach’s discussion
of the relations between illata and concreta must be cited at some
length. He first explains that the “concreteness” sometimes attrib-
uted to things is mistakenly taken to be restricted to “things of a
material existence,” because what things can enter the domain of
immediate existence is “not at all determined by the place of things
in the physical arrangement of the world, but by psychological
conditions.” He then declares that the perspective in which we
see the world from the standpoint of our “middle-scale dimen-
sions” is one-sided.

“We see the world in the scale of our sense capacities: we see houses,
trees, men, tools, tables, solids, liquids, waves, fields, woods, and the
whole covered by the vault of the heavens* This perspective, however.

[260] Sovereign Reason

is not only one-sided; it is false, in a certain sense. Even the concreta,
the things which we believe we see as they are, are objectively of
shapes otiier than we see them. We see the polished surface of our table
as a smooth plane; but we know that it is a network of atoms with
interstices much larger than the mass particles, and the microscope
already shows not the atoms but the fact that the apparent smoothness
is not better than the ‘smoothness’ of the peel of a shriveled apple. We
see the iron stove before us as a model of rigidity, solidity, immovability;
but we know that its particles perform a violent dance, and that it re-
sembles a swarm of dancing gnats more than the picture of sohdity we
attribute to it. . . . We do not see the things, not even the concreta, as
they objectively are but in a distorted form, we see a substitute 'world
—not the world as it is, objectively speaking.

“Using the terminology developed above, we should say that even
the concreta are only subjective things, of the type to which an objective
thing of different form is coordinated. These things are coupled, but
they are not strictly speakmg identical. . . . Our immediate world is,
strictly speaking, subjective throughout; it is a substitute world in which
we live.” (pp. 219-220.)

What is the ground offered for these most important conclu-
sions,^ The reason is that the mechanism of sensation is so organized
that it cannot produce a sensation without superimposing upon it
a certain “description,”

“We do not see things as amorphous but always as framed within a
certain description. . . . The objects of our sensations always have a
^Gestalt character.’ They appear as if pressed into a certain conceptual
frame; it is their being seen within this frame which we call immediate
existence. The description in whose frame we see thmgs corresponds
to the objecdve thing only to a certain extent . . . [and] is never more
than a substitute for a completely true description and will express only
certain more or less essential features of the physical object.” (p. 221.)

The argument has now completed its full period and the bear-
ings of Professor Reichenbach’s epistemological principles are ap-
parent. Let us first clear away minor details. Professor Reichenbach
began by claiming that the world of immediate existents enters
“into our world without any intellectual operations being per-
formed by us.” He has now apparently gone back on his word,
maintaining that even immediately existing things are overlaid by
a descriptional framework which we introduce; the alleged “sub-
jectivity” of what is observed is taken to follow from this fact.
On the other hand, he also maintains that the descriptions in whose
frame we “see” things correspond to the objective things only to

'Probability and the Theory of Knowledge [ 261 ]

a certain extent. Now how does Professor Reichenbach know
this? What avenue of information has he got about the objective
world which enables him to characterize our judgments about the
observeable world as “false in a certain sense”? For is not the
reason for his discrediung judgments of observation that they are
conditioned by the mechanism of the body> Is the knowledge he
has of the objective things independent of such mechanism— is not
this knowledge also selective and formulated in a “descriptional
frame”? Why should not the knowledge he claims to have of
scientific objects be also characterized as not being of objective
things, for the very reasons he advances for ruling out the ob-
jectivity of shapes and sounds and textures?

Professor Reichenbach also declares that the table seen as smooth
is not objectively smooth. But if the polished table-top is not ob-
jectively smooth, to what can the term “objectively smooth” be
legitimately applied? How would he characterize that tabled Surely
it is in consonance with established usage to say, and therefore in
accordance with the meaning of the phrase, that a polished table-
top is objectively smooth. If Professor Reichenbach decides that
such a table does not have this property, is he not simply altering
the accepted meaning of the expression, and substituting for it a
sense which is different from that ordinarily put upon it, and
therefore irrelevant to the specific context he is considering?

There is much in his discussion which suggests that according
to him all qualities whatsoever have only “subjective existence.”
Thus, in enumerating the various things that can directly appear
as immediate existents he mentions “things, or states of things,
including states of my body,” but maintains that qualities like red,
warm, and hard are not given because “they do not belong to the
external things”; and he also maintains that science has shown that
things have such qualities only when they enter into relations with
our own bodies (p. i68). Again, he declares that the fact that we
see parallel railroad tracks as convergent “is a subjective fact,
since the objective physical stimulus does not give any indication
as to this psychological fact” (p. 242). But it is not clear, how-
ever, how it follows from the fact that the occurrence of certain
qualities is conditional upon the occurrence of certain physical
processes, that those qualities have only subjective existence. Does
not Professor Reichenbach find something curious in an argument

[ 2 Si] Sovereign Reason

which uses admitted facts of human physiology to support the
conclusion that properties observable in physiological processes
have only subjective existence? Again, is not the convergence of
the parallel rails an objective fact about the rails, the behavior of
light being what it is? Or is it Professor Reichenbach’s view that
an account of the rails in terms of mechanical properties is a “truer”
account than one in terms of their optical ones? There is some
ground for suspicion that he has simply baptized as “subjective”
whatever has conditions for its existence, occurrence, or appear-
ance. In such terms, however, what thing or what property of
things can rightfully claim objective existence^

Professor Reichenbach’s gravest error seems to me to consist in
his taking perception as a case of knowledge, contrary to the main
intent of his own argument. To prevent the possibility of mis-
judging him, I shall add one further citation to those already
given. In explaining that in spite of the subjectivity of concreta
we need not therefore renounce the possibility of ever obtaining
a “true picture of the world,” he declares:

“The perspective of the beetle in the meadow is better than ours in
the sense that it allows a more precise observation of the individual
blades; but the green evenness of the meadow which we see is an essen-
tial feature also, although unattainable for the beetle. When we see the
polished table as a smooth surface, this is not simply false— this picture
contains some qualities of the physical table which the picture of the
swarm of ^ats suppresses, namely, the relative smallness of the corpuscles
and interstices compared with the two-dimensional extension. It is true
that our substitute world is one-sided; but at least it shows us some
essential features of the world. Scientific investigation adds many new
features. ... It is our task to organize all the different pictures obtained
in this way into one superior whole. Though this whole is not, in itself,
a picture m the sense of a direct perspective, it may be called intuitive in
a more indirect sense. We wander through the world, from perspective
to perspective, carrying our own subjective horizon with us; it is by a
kind of intellectual integration of subjective views that we succeed in
constructing a total view of the world, the consistent expansion of which
entitles us to ever increasing claims of objectivity,” (p. 225.)

He also explains that a logical construction of the world on the
basis of immediate existents “allows us to obtain basic statements
of a high degree of certainty; for it is much more certain that
there is an immediate thing A than that there is an objective thing
- 4 ” (p. 266). Indeed, apparently forgetting what he said pre-

Probability and the Theory of Knowledge [ 263 ]

viously about impression statements, he declares that the highest
imtial weights are assigned to propositions about immediately ob-
served things, so that “the most certain knowledge is consequendy
of the immediate present” (p. 281).

I frankly do not understand Professor Reichenbach if he does
not mean to say that the beetle in perceiving blades of grass is
having knowledge of the grass, just as we are having knowledge
of It in perceiving the green of the meadow, even though both
“views” are subjective. I do not pretend to know what can be
meant by having certain knowledge of the immediate present; but
I think It is clear that Professor Reichenbach claims such knowl-
edge, and that in making such a claim he is equating the presenta-
tion or occurrence of a datum with knowledge. It is useless at this
stage to ask how one is to go about estimating the weights of such
statements as “There is an immediate thing . 4 .” It is more impor-
tant that we conclude this critical study with a few indications
of the reasons which have led Professor Reichenbach to his present
“dualistic” epistemology.

If cases of perception (or immediate existence) are taken as cases
of knowledge, the dualism of a subjective world (into which fall
all the familiar common-sense objects) and an objective world
(into which fall scientific objects) is generated in a familiar man-
ner. For as Professor Reichenbach repeatedly illustrates, things
as perceived do not exhibit properties which things taken as sci-
entific objects are defined to have or are shown to possess by
further inquiry. Thus, the perceived optical convergence of rails
does not reveal either their mechanical parallelism or their optical
parallelism from a different perspective; the observed smoothness
of the table-top does not show the complicated molecular structure
of the wood; and in general, the presentation of a trait in observa-
tion does not disclose the complex of objects which competent
scientific investigation establishes as the cause or condition of the
existence of that trait. But if perception is knowledge, and if that
knowledge is to be veridical, it is natural to argue that traits di-
rectly observed ought to be the traits uncovered by the inferential
procedures of the sciences. Since, however, this is not the case, and
since the explanatory power of scientific objects is obviously
superior, it is but a short step to the conclusion that perceptual
knowledge is “false in a certain sense/^ that illata have objective

[ 264 ] Sovereign Reason

existence, and that matters directly observed have only subjective
existence, especially since the occurrence of perceivable qualities
is so clearly conditioned by physical and physiological processes
in the perceiving organism. Thus, almost by a play upon words,
we are condemned to inhabit a “substitute world,” with only
problematic means of communication with the objective world of
science. Will not Professor Reichenbach be persuaded to aban-
don the premises from which his dualism follows, and adhere
consistently to his genume insight that thinking as an inferential
process is carried on in the objective common-sense world of houses
and trees and wars, that it terminates in knowledge of this world,
and that “immediate existents” are not objects but instrumentah-
ties of such knowledge? Will he not reconsider his thesis that
immediate existents are historical and psychological primitives, and
come to think of them as terminal points in analysis, discriminated
for the sake of making more reliable the application of our theories
and of the controls we can institute to test their worths Will he
not consistently recognize, what he does so excellently on occa-
sion, that the identification, differentiation, and location of imme-
diate existents can be performed only in terms of things whose
objectivity must be taken for granted? He may then find that
the “problem” of adjusting his two worlds, like the problem of
the external world, requires no solution because there is no prob-
lem to be solved.

One final point. It is not possible to know how seriously Pro-
fessor Reichenbach intends his language to be taken, and one may
easily do him an injustice by taking his words more literally than
he planned. But however that may be, he does talk of obtaining
a “completely true description” of the world in terms of organiz-
ing different subjective “pictures” or “perspectives” into one su-
perior whole. Now it is one thing to organize into a unity the duffer-
ent visual perspectives of a pair of rails; it is another thing to
organize into a systematic whole the various physical and chemical
theories we may have for the constitution of steel; and it is a third
thing, and it seems to me a gravely confused thing, to try to or-
ganize into a unified “description” the visual perspectives and
physico-chemical conditions for the occurrence of these perspec-
tives. Rightly or wrongly, Professor Reichenbach’s readers do get
the impression that according to him a “true picture of the world”

Probability and the Theory of Knowledge [ 265 ]

would be a picture or image, but a picture without perspectives,
without focus, and without selection. Would not such a “descrip-
tion” simply be the whole world all over again, duplicated to
serve a philosopher’s fancy? And in any case, is he doing a service
to anyone in maintaining that it is not logically impossible to see
atoms or radio waves? It is a question of fact into which we need
not enter whether terms like “atom” are not so defined and used
that it is a logical absurdity to suppose that atoms could be per-
ceived. What is relevant to our purpose is to point out that Pro-
fessor Reichenbach talks of scientific objects as if knowledge of
them were a kind of seeing, and that in so doing he has not clari-
fied what terms like “atom,” “radio wave,” “light wave” mean
because he has not exhibited how such terms are used in theoretical
physics and scientific inquiry. Thus, his defense of the “inde-
pendent existence” of atoms is effective enough against those who
deny such existence; but both the defense and the offense are
carried on upon the common assumption that the atomic theory
is a pictorial report or description of matters which, alas for our
human limitations, are not accessible to direct observation through
the senses. Is it not high time to challenge this assumption and to
insist that having knowledge is nothing like having an image, how-
ever grand and unified such images may be? And is not the way
to discover what knowledge of the existence of atoms and light
waves is, that of examining the procedures of the physicist when
he claims such knowledge and of the uses he makes of these terms
in his inquiries? Having now made his venture into epistemology,
win not Professor Reichenbach return to the kind of analyses he
was performing when he wrote his Axiomatik der Raum-Zeit
Lehre and his Philosophie der Raum-Zeit Lehre? It is in such
works that the strength and virtue of scientific philosophy lie.

Sovereign Reason

is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope
‘what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to
thrust aside what they do not thucydibes .

I.

TThe injunction to take Reason as one’s guide has fallen repeat-
edly on men’s ears at least since classical antiquity; and the place
of Reason in nature and society has been an oft-recurring theme in
the history of thought. Philosophers have been perennially occu-
pied with analyzing Reason’s anatomy and function; poets and
moralists have celebrated its worth and dignity; and even those
engrossed in the conquest and cynical use of power have not sel-
dom made forma] obeisance to its authority. If men have so often
been found wanting in adapting their conduct and beliefs to the
precepts of Reason, it has surely not been for lack of frequent
verbal encouragement to do so.

[266 3

Sovereign Reason [ 267 ]

Men’s failure to live reasonably is in large measure a consequence
of the fact that though man is by nature a rational animal, the
proficient exercise of rational powers is not a natural blessing but
a difficult achievement. For the full realization of those powers is
the end-product of an arduous personal discipline, to which only
a few of mankind have been able to subject themselves; and the
exercise of those powers is also contingent upon favorable material
and social circumstances, not easily called into existence, and not
generally available in human epochs when a rigid tradition or
brutal compulsion is the primary determinant of personal and
social action. However, mankind’s alleged failure to take Reason
for its guide cannot always be explained in such terms. For the
allegation is often the consequence of the fact that human beliefs
and actions are being judged on the basis of conflicting concep-
tions as to what it is to be rational. Though the name of Reason
is frequently invoked to sanction or to condemn various practices
and beliefs, Reason’s ostensible spokesmen do not always speak
with a single voice. In short, men have been confronted with in-
compatible ideals of Reason, not all of which can be congruent
with human powers and nature’s organization. Whatever else one
may learn from the study of philosophy and its history, one can-
not easily escape the fact that the canons which mankind has
employed in evaluating the reasonableness of conduct and belief
have varied with local tradition and historical circumstance.

Systems of philosophy can indeed be profitably studied as ex-
plicit and refined formulations of standards of rationality, pro-
posed as ideals against which conduct and claims to genuine knowl-
edge are to be measured. These standards, whatever may be the
evidence on which their proponents formally accept them, have
in general not been the exclusive creations of those who thus ex-
plicitly propose them: they have frequently been the symptoms
and intellectual expressions of pervasive tensions and needs oper-
ating in various forms in the inclusive social matrix within which
philosophical systems come to birth or find wide acceptance. It
is thus undoubtedly illuminating to examine philosophical doc-
trines in terms of their origins and causes and to determine to
what extent the perspectives from which philosophers view the
world are formed by current customs, current beliefs, and current
moral and intellectual problems.

[ 268 ] Sovereign Reason

However, philosophical ideas are not simply otiose by-products
of cultural processes, exercising no reciprocal influence upon their
matrix cultures. On the contrary, the standards of rationality ex-
plicitly or implicitly contained in philosophic systems have re-
peatedly served as guides in resolving practical and intellectual
issues and in directing theoretical inquiry. The general acceptance
of a system of philosophy thus frequently leads to consequences
of far-reaching importance to both society and science. Accord-
ingly, the analysis of the canons of rationality involved in philo-
sophic doctrines, with a view to evaluating their adequacy and
authority, as distinct from investigating their causes and their
matter-of-fact consequences, is a contribution, however indirect,
to serious social criticism.

It is with such an examination of the canons of rationality im-
plicit in one historically influential system of philosophy— that of
philosophical idealism— that the present paper is concerned. Few
would care to deny that the domination which this system of ideas
once exercised over thinking minds m this country is now a thing
of the past. Nevertheless, the conception of Reason proposed by
it is still worth serious attention. It is a conception which satisfies
the deep-seated need of sensitive minds for an ideal that is inclusive
and worthy of human devotion. It is a view of the goal of thought
and of the power of reason that appears to many as the sole alterna-
tive to accepting dogmatic preference and brute power as ultimate
standards. And it is an interpretation of the office of Reason
which still controls the minds of many men eminent in science
and art, and which in various guises guides much recent discussion
in social and moral philosophy. One is therefore not engaging in
a gratuitous intellectual exercise in attempting a fresh evaluation
of this ideal of Reason. Is it an ideal firmly rooted in the character
of the world and implicit in the actual operations of human reflec-
tion? Or is it a conception of the goal of thought that is funda-
mentally irrelevant to the procedures and conclusions of controlled
inquiry, inherently incapable of even partial attainment, the vain
pursuit of which leads only to an enervating scepticism and even-
tual despair?

This ideal of Reason has been argued in recent years with great
vigor and unusual clarity by Professor Brand Blanshard. His pres-
entation of the case for it has in addition the merit of recognizing

Sovereign Reason [ 269 ]

many of the deficiencies and obscurities of earlier formulations of
the doctrine and of exhibiting considerable familiarity with rele-
vant developments in modem logic and science. The task of evalu-
ating the standard of rationality proposed by philosophic idealism
has thus become a relatively easy one, for it is now possible to
concentrate on Mr. Blanshard’s presentation of the evidence for
this ideal, in the confident behef that no presentation of the case
for it more cogent than his could be made. Accordingly, the present
paper will be devoted exclusively to appraising some of the con-
siderations advanced by Mr. Blanshard in favor of this ideal. It
will be impossible, naturally, to deal with all the issues he raises
in all their dimensions, and m particular it will be necessary to pass
by in silence his own criticisms of alternative standards of ration-
ality that have been proposed by contemporary pluralistic natur-
alists. But while much in his argument must be neglected, it is
hoped that what will be discussed is at any rate near the center of
his vision.

What, then, is the proper goal of Reason, as Mr. Blanshard
envisages it, and what are the arguments upon which he rests his
case.^^ The very end and goal of Reason, he declares,

is to understand, and to understand is always to follow an objective pat-
tern or order. What kind of order is this^ If it is to satisfy reason, it
must be an intelligible order, and what is that? It is an order that never
meets our question Why? with a final rebuff, one in which there is always
an answer to be found, whether in fact we find it or not. And what sort
of answer would satisfy that question? Only an answer in terms of
necessity, and ultimately of logical necessity, since of any answer that
falls short of this the question Why^ can be raised again. When we
reach an answer that is necessary, we see that to repeat the question is
idle. Of any statement of merely causal necessity, such as the law of
gravitation, or Ohm’s law, or Boyle’s law, we can intelligibly ask why
things should behave in this manner. But when we see that things equal
to the same thing are equal to each other, we cannot sensibly ask why,
because we are at the end of the line to which such questioning can take
us. We have already reached the logically necessary.^

And as he explains more fuUy elsewhere,

Fully coherent knowledge would be knowledge in which every judg-
ment entailed, and was entailed by, the rest of the system^ Probably
we never find in fact a system where there is so much of interdepen-

I. “Current Strictures on Reason,” Fhilosophtcal Revie'W, LTV (July, 1945),
360-361.

[ 270 ] Sovereign Reason

dence. ... It is in such systems, perhaps, as Euclidean geometry that
we get the most perfect examples of coherence that have been con-
structed. If any proposition were lacking, it could be supplied from the
rest; if any were altered, the repercussions would be felt through the
length and breadth of the system. Yet even such a system as this falls
short of ideal system. Its postulates are unproved; they are independent
of each other, in the sense that none of them could be derived from any
other or even from all the others together; its clear necessity is brought
by an abstractness so extreme as to have left out nearly everything that
belongs to the character of actual things. A completely satisfactory
system would have none of these defects. No proposition would be arbi-
trary, every proposition would be entailed by the others jointly and
even singly, no proposition would stand outside the system. . .

But this ideal of knowledge is a valid ideal, and something other
than the expression of undisciplined self-indulgence, Mr. Blanshard
believes, only if the world which thought seeks to apprehend is
one “in which intelligence finds an answering intelligibility,”^ only
if reality likewise is an “all-inclusive and perfectly integrated sys-
tem”^ whose parts logically imply each other. It is upon this view
of reality that he ultimately rests his case for the ideal of reason he
professes, and it is to a defense of this -theory of reality that he
devotes his best efforts.

At this point, however, a reader not antecedently committed to
Mr. Blanshard’s canons of intelligibility might enter a protest.
Why should the goal of human reason, such a reader might ask,
be dictated by this alleged character of reality, even if this all-
inclusive reality does have the character Mr. Blanshard believes it
to have? What logical compulsion is there that even if the world
does possess such a perfectly integrated logical structure, human
thought should seek to encompass it^ Are not the actual tasks of
human reason set by specific problems, involving only a sector of
what exists, whose successful resolution does not, in point of fact,
require a consideration of the rest of nature? And should not,
therefore, the ideals of human reason, and the principles of criti-
cism that men ought to employ in evaluating proposed solutions
to their problems, be established by considering the ways in which
specific problems do become resolved, rather than by trying to

2. The Nature of Thought (New York, 1940), II, 264-266.

3. “Current Strictures on Reason,” p. 361.

4. The Nature of Thought, H, 475,

Sovereign Reason [ 271 ]

ground those ideals and principles in the character of an all-
inclusive reality that is only vaguely present to men’s vision^

Mr. Blanshard is not entirely unmindful of such objections, nor
does he conceal from himself that the ideal of knowledge he por-
trays is in conflict with the general positivistic tenor of modern
science as well as with many current naturalistic interpretations
of the function of thought. Nevertheless, he attempts to show that
the ideal he invokes for human reason is implicit in the tasks human
reason normally undertakes. He rejects the view, common since
Hume, that all propositions about matters of fact are contingent;
for he maintains and tries to prove that “in the end” no proposi-
tions are devoid of logical necessity, and that only on the sup-
position that no proposition is “altogether contingent”® can re-
sponsible inquiry be distinguished from arbitrary postulation. Ob-
jections of the type briefly cited above do not therefore lead Mr.
Blanshard to doubt his fundamental commitments, and a critic
who wishes to come to grips with him must consider the positive
arguments he employs to support his thesis. The foundation upon
which Mr, Blanshard builds his case is the doctrine of internal
relations, and it is with an examination of his arguments for this
doctrine that the remainder of this paper will be concerned.

2 .

The issue raised by the doctrine of internal relations is “whether
a term could be what it is apart from the relations it bears to
others.” Mr. Blanshard explains this issue more fully as follows:

A relation is internal to a term when in its absence the term would be
different; it is external when its addition or withdrawal would make no
difference to the term, . . , Those who accept the theory of internal
relations . . . hold that everything, if we knew enough, would turn our
to be internally related to everydbing else. . .

But this formulation, he believes, is not free from ambiguity, and
he therefore amplifies it into the following statement:

. . . Everything is so integral a part of a context that it can neither be
nor be truly conceived apart from that context. Put more formally, the
theory is this: (i) that every term, i.e., every possible object of thought,
is what it is in virtue of relations to what is other than itself; (2) that its

5. ^‘Current Strictures on Reason,” p. 368.

6. The Nature of Thought, II, 451.

[ 272 ] Sovereign Reason

nature is affected thus not by some of its relations only, but in differing
degrees by all of them, no matter how external they may seem; ( 3 ) that
in consequence of (2) and of the further obvious fact that everything is
related in some way to everything else, no knowledge will reveal com-
pletely the nature of any term until it has exhausted that term’s relations
to everything elseJ

Mr. Blanshard’s statement of the doctrine of internal relations
has undoubted advantages of greater clarity over other formula-
tions. Nevertheless, one crucial point in it seems to me essentially
obscure, and something must be said about it before I turn to his
detailed defense of his thesis. For in the statement of his doctrine
as well as in the ensuing discussion of it Mr. Blanshard uses the
phrase “the nature of a term,” though I have been unable to dis-
cover in his writings any explicit explanation of what he means by
it; yet everything depends upon the sense that is to be assigned
to it. What ought we to understand by the expression?

At least three uses of the word “nature” can be distinguished
when the word occurs in such contexts as “the nature of

(i) In the first place, it frequently occurs in questions and
answers such as the following: “What is the nature of a circle^”—
“The nature of a circle is to be a closed plane curve, all of whose
points are equidistant from a fixed point”; “What is the nature of
electricity?”— “The nature of electricity is to be a mode of physi-
cal behavior specified by Maxwell’s equations”; “What is the na-
ture of man^”— “The nature of man is to be a rational animal” It
is clear that in this usage, the terms whose natures are being dis-
cussed are kinds, characters, or universals, are capable of repeated
exemplification in concrete individuals and processes but are not
themselves concrete individuals or processes. Successful inquiries
into natures, in this sense of the word, terminate in what has tra-
ditionally been called definition, though the outcome of such re-
search might more appropriately be designated as theory. The
intellectual service that is rendered when the natures of universals
are satisfactorily formulated is‘ that other generic characters asso-
ciated with the former can be exhibited as logical implicates of
those umversals.® I shall call this use of the word “nature” its
primary use.

7, Ibid,, p. 452.

8. Although I am employing realistic language throughout this paper, and
am thus assuming that there are such things as universals, this is done primarhy

Sovereign 'Reason [ 273 ]

An allied sense of the word “nature” is illustrated by such state-
ments as “The nature of gold is to be malleable” and “It is the
nature of cats to catch mice.” Here again natures are predicated
of umversals or characters, not of individuals. However, what is
said in such statements to be the nature of a kind is not a definition
or complete theory of the kind but is regarded as merely a logical
implicate of some assumed complete theory. Thus, the dispositional
predicate “being malleable” is generally not taken to constitute
the definition of gold, though it is commonly supposed to follow
logically from such a defimtion.

(2) A second important sense of the word “nature” is illus-
trated by such statements as* “It is the nature of this particular
figure to have an angle-sum equal to two right-angles,” “To be
rust-resisting is the nature of this knife,” or “The nature of Socrates
is to be mortal.” In these contexts natures are being predicated of
concrete things or individuals, rather than of universals or char-
acters as in the previous examples. However, statements like the
present ones must frequently be understood as elliptic formulations,
in which something is predicated to be the nature, or to be of
the nature, of an individual, only in the sense that the individual
has the character designated as its nature as a consequence of his
displaying some other character. Thus, the mortality which is
asserted to be of the nature of Socrates belongs to him insofar as
Socrates is human, for if Socrates is a man, and assuming an appro-
priate formulation of the nature of the generic character man
(in the primary sense of the word “nature”), it follows that
Socrates is mortal. In this usage of the word “nature,” therefore,
to be snub-nosed is not part of the nature of Socrates, since though
he is a man, it does not follow from his being one that he is snub-
nosed. In this usage, also, though to be mortal is of the nature of
Socrates insofar as he is human, mortality need not be part of his
nature insofar as he may exhibit some other generic character,
for example having a physical body of a determinate shape. Ac-
cordingly, when, in the present sense of the word “nature,” an
mdividual is said to have a specified nature, what is being asserted

for the sake of expediting the present discussion. Whether, and in what sense,
one must make this assumption is another question, whose resolution does
not, I think, affect the argument in this paper.

[ 274 ] Sovereign Reasofi

is a connection between characters or umversals. Since, however,
an individual possesses an indefinite number of characters, not all
of which logically entail one another, whether a given trait the
individual exhibits does or does not belong to his nature is relative
to what other character is selected for describing the individual.

(3) I come finally to a third and most puzzling use of the word
“nature,” according to which individuals are said to have intrinsic
natures, where the predication of such natures is supposed to be
made without eEipsis, Thus, it is frequently said that the nature
of a given individual (eg., Socrates) is to be a man, or that the
nature of the moon is to be a satellite, not insofar as those indi-
viduals exhibit some further character, but absolutely and with-
out qualification. What are we to understand by the word “nature”
when it is used in this manner.^

There is one interpretation that seems obvious, though it may
not carry us far. On this interpretation the character attributed to
an individual as its nature is one which permits the systematic
organization and logical derivation of a large number of other
traits the individual exhibits. For example, m asserting that the
nature of Socrates is to be a man, what we are asserting on the
proposed interpretation is that many other characters possessed by
Socrates, such as the ability to see and hear, to experience joy and
sorrow, to resent injury, to remember and reflect, are logical con-
sequences of his being a man. However, this interpretation of the
word “nature” does not require us to say that every trait an indi-
vidual thing possesses is a consequence of its nature. Thus, even
if on some theory of man it would follow from the fact that Soc-
rates is a man that he must be capable of sexual passion, it would
not follow from his fiature alone that he must be fond of music,
or that he must be a lover of Alcibiades. In brief, on this inter-
pretation of the term, in predicating a character of an individual
as its nature we bring into systematic order only a selected group
of traits and actions it exhibits.

It is at this point that our difficulties begin, for there apparently
are some people, among whom Mr, Blanshard is perhaps to be
included, who conceive the nature of an individual as something
which logically determines all the thing’s attributes and relation^
properties and not merely some of them. But such a use of the
word “nature” seems to me to lead to fatal consequences.

Sovereign Reason [ 275 ]

In the first place, it is quite clear that just what characters are
included in an individual, and just where the boundaries of an
individual are drawn, depend on decisions as to the use of lan-
guage. These decisions, though motivated by considerations of
practical utility, are logically arbitrary. Thus, the expression ‘‘the
sun” is generally understood to cover an object confined to a
certain apparent volume possessing a certain shape, and exhibiting
certain radiant properties; it is usually not employed so as to cover
the innumerable spatial relations that object has to other things,
nor the energies that had been radiated from the object but are
now millions of miles away from it. Nevertheless, the phrase “the
sun” could be used so that the individual thing to which it refers
will include not only the items just mentioned but also all the
physical events that stand to the thing (as initially specified) in
relations of causal antecedents and consequences, and even all the
images and ideas which men have had or ever will have of it. Ac-
cordingly, just what qualities and relations are to be included as
parts or elements of an individual thing is not a question to be
settled by empirical investigation of facts, but a question which
calls for a practical delimitation.

However, if the word “individual” is so used that an individual
will include all possible attributes, relations, and relational prop-
erties it may possess, two consequences immediately follow: there
will be only one individual, which will coincide with the con-
jectural “totality” of all things, events, and relations; and secondly,
every statement containing the name of an individual will express
an analytical proposition. Both consequences are practically un-
desirable, for reasons too obvious to need mention. But these
consequences can be avoided only by restricting the use of the
word “individual,” as is normally done, $0 that individuals will
include only a proper subset of their possible attributes and rela-
tional properties, however vaguely this subset might be delimited
and however inexhaustible its membership may be.

But if this is so, and if, as is generally admitted, in the normal
use of the word “individual” individuals are not logically definable
(because they are taken to include an inexhaustible set of logically
independent characters), what are we to understand by assertions
concerning the nature of an individual thing, in the absolute, un-
qualified sense of the word “nature”? We must remind ourselves

[ 276 ] Sovereign Reason

that, in this absolute sense, the nature of an individual is supposed
to determine logically all the thing’s traits and behaviors, its en-
during as well as its passing quahties. On the other hand, it is
demonstrable that if the nature of a thing is something that is
capable of formulation and definition, the nature of a thing can-
not by itself determine all of its characteristics. For example, if
to be a metal is taken to be the nature of a concrete thing, this
nature may entail the fact that the thing is malleable; but this
nature will not, by itself, determine the specific degree of malle-
ability exhibited by the thing, nor will it determine the specific
shapes the thing may assume at various times. Such further state-
ments about the thing are derivable from a statement about its
nature only if the latter is supplemented by other, logically inde-
pendent statements, which are instantial in form and specify the
contingent initial and boundary conditions under which the thing
happens to exist. Accordingly, on the supposition that the natures
of things are statable and definable, the nature of a thing cannot
determine every character the thing may possess.

As far as I can see, however, this conclusion can be avoided in
only one way— by equatmg the nature of a thing with the thing
itself. But such an attempted escape from difficulties leads to con-
sequences no less disastrous. In the first place, the nature of a
thing, like the thing itself, would be something that is in prin-
ciple indefinable and could not therefore be made the basis for
bringing into systematic order any of the characters which the
thing displays. In the second place, every statement which men-
tions the nature of an individual would express no more than a
trivial analytical proposition. And in the third place, since dis-
cursive thought would be inherently inadequate to the task of dis-
covering the natures of things, the goal of understanding the
natures of things could not be a pertinent ideal for human reason.

Should these difficulties be brushed aside with the comment that
they arise only for finite minds and not for an '‘infinite intelli-
gence,” the appropriate rejoinder is close at hand. Why should
finite minds adopt an ideal of reason that is suitable for an intelli-
gence totally different from theirs^ Moreover, would not even an
all-encompassing mind fail to achieve the “fully coherent knowl-
edge” that Mr. Blanshard envisages as the ultimate aim of thought?
For the characters things possess fall into a large number of sub-

Sovereign Reason [ 277 ]

classes which are demonstrably independent of each other logi-
cally, If, therefore, an infinite mind did ever come to know the
nature of a thing, it would know it only as a miscellaneous col-
lection of attributes and relational properties, some of which do
logically entail others, and some of which are logically independent
of others. Accordingly, even such a mind would be compelled to
recognize an ineradicable contingency in the very heart of the
nature of things.

I have spent much time on matters that are preliminary to a
discussion of Mr. Blanshard’s arguments for the doctrine of in-
ternal relations. I hope the time has not been misspent. Mr. Blan-
shard nowhere states explicitly what he understands by the phrase
“the nature of a term”; but his rejection of the false or abstract
universal in favor of the true or concrete universal suggests that
for him the nature of a thing simply is the total set of characters
included in the thing. Indeed, he does say that

the nature of any term, unless the term is itself a relation, consists of
attributes or properties (in the non-technical sense), by the nature of an
apple we mean its roundness, its redness, its juiciness, and so on. Thus a
change m any of the properties would be a change in the apple’s nature.®

And such a statement does provide some ground for the suspicion
that this is the way he is using the expression “the nature of a
thing.” But in any event, I shall try to show that only on such
an interpretation of this expression do his arguments for the doc-
trine of internal relations fail to illustrate the fallacy of non sequitur.

3 -

I shall examine Mr. Blanshard’s arguments for the doctrine of
internal relations under three divisions into which they can be
conveniently placed: arguments concerned with the relations of
concrete things to one another, those dealing with the relations
of universals; and finally, those addressed to the nature of causal
relations.

Although Mr. Blanshard offers several grounds for his theory
under the first head, they seem to me to be homogeneous in type,
and I shall therefore comment on only one, in the belief that it is
representative of the others. According to this argument, “every-
thing is related to everything else by the relation of difference at

9. The Nature of Thought, II, 478.

[ 278 ] Sovereign Reason

least,” so that if A and B are two concrete (and therefore distinct)
individuals, A must be related to B by the relation of difference.
However, were this relation altered, A would no longer be the
thing it is, since it would then not differ from that which, by
hypothesis, is distinct from itself. But “a relation that could not
be theoretically changed without changing the thing itself is pre-
cisely what we mean by an internal relation.”^® Hence the rela-
tion of difference is internal to A; indeed, everything is therefore
internally related in this manner to everything else. And by a
stncdy parallel argument Mr. Blanshard also tries to show that
“what holds in this respect of the relation of difference holds of
other relations as weU.”^^

I fear, however, that though this argument has the impressive
quality of great simplicity, its only merit is that it establishes a
truism. To show that this is so, I shall restate it in terms of a
special example. Suppose A and B are two individual plane figures,
A having the shape of a circle, B that of a triangle. A and B are
surely different, both numerically and with respect to the shapes
they possess. Mr. Blanshard’s claim is that the relation of being
different from B is internal to A, because if A did not stand in this
relation to B, A would be different from what it in fact is. Does
the argument establish what Mr. Blanshard believes it does.^

(a) Notice, in the first place, that if the nature of a thing is
distinguished from the thing, the admitted facts of the example
do not yield the conclusion that the relation of difference is in-
ternal to the individual A. Undoubtedly, given that B is triangular
in shape, A could not be circular unless A differed in shape from
B. But to say that A would fail to have the shape it does in fact
have, did it not differ in shape from B, is prima facie not equiva-
lent to saying that A^s nature would be affected were A not dif-
ferent in shape from B. However, on Mr. Blanshard’s explicit
formulation of the doctrine of internal relations, it is this latter
claim that must be made good if the relation of difference is to be
established as internal to A, But Mr. Blanshard offers no reasons
why his readers should accept this claim, unless indeed he assumes,
contrary to the hypothesis, that A and A's nature are one and the
same. If, however, he does assume this, the relation of difference

10. Ibid ,, pp. 476-477.

11. Ibid., p. 478.

Sovereign Reason [ 279 ]

is internal to A, but only because of some initial (though perhaps
not explicit) practical decision as to what attributes and relational
properties are to be included in the individual A, Accordingly,
Mr. Blanshard has supplied adequate grounds for the statement
that difference is a relation internal to A if, and only if, tliis state-
ment is construed as a glaring tautology.

(b) Let us consider the matter in another light. Suppose that
the individual figure B were to be destroyed so that A, though
retaining its circular shape, would no longer be different from
B—for the simple reason that there no longer would be the figure
B from which it could differ. It seems, therefore, that A remains
the thing it is in spite of the fact that one of its relations is altered.

I do not know what Mr, Blanshard would say to this objection
to his argument, but his reply might conceivably take the follow-
ing form: To be sure, he might say, the shape of A need not be
affected by the destruction of the individual B, but its nature
would be. For the nature of A is something such that the fact that
A stands in some relation J? to a thing follows logically from that
nature. But since, on the hypothesis under discussion, A ceases to
have a relation to a thing that it did have, A's nature must be ac-
knowledged to have undergone alteration, on pain of logical con-
tradiction.

If this is Mr. Blanshard’s reply, he requires us to consider again
the cryptic notion of the nature of an individual thing. Now it is
certainly the case that the proposition, A is different in shape from
By follows logically from the two propositions that A is circular
in shape and B is triangular, where A and B are two plane figures.
But it is well to note that the conclusion of this inference is en-
tailed by propositions about the shapes of the two individuals.
If, then, the relational property of being different from B is alleged
to be internal to Ay it is internal to it only relative to the contingent
facts that A is circular and B is triangular. Accordingly, to assert
that A is necessarily related to B by the relation of difference, is
simply an elliptic formulation of the fact that the characters A
and B possess logically exclude one another. On the other hand,
neither the proposition that A is circular in shape nor the proposi-
tion that B is triangular in shape is logically necessary, and we
cannot therefore conclude that the relational property of being
different from B is internal to A without further qualification. On

[ 28o ] Sovereign Reason

the contrary, though the relation of difference may be internal
to A relative to A's possessing one character, it will not in general
be internal to A relative to A\ possessing some other character. For
example, if A and B are figures constructed out of white chalk, the
relational property of being different from B is not internal to A
relative to its being white m color.

Mr. Blanshard’s hypothetical reply to the objection does not
therefore dispose of it, unless indeed he construes the nature of a
thing to be identical with the total set of attributes and relational
properties the thing possesses. In that case, however, he has been
arguing strenuously for a truism that no one would care to dispute.

(c) It IS pertinent to note, moreover, that even if one were to
grant Mr. Blanshard’s claim that all the characters a thing pos-
sesses are internal to it, his major task would still be ahead of
him. For he would still have to show that the necessary relations
in which individuals stand to one another satisfy his requirements
for a perfectly coherent rational system. In particular, there would
remain the task of showing that the complex of characters which
constitute an individual thing's nature do indeed form such a
system—so that if P and Q are any two characters that are ele-
ments in a thing’s nature, P and Q mutually entail one another. On
the face of it, this seems like a hopeless undertaking, if modem
mathematics and natural science do not deceive us in asserting that
there are many characters which are logically independent of one
another. And unless Mr. Blanshard can find an answer to what
appear to be cogent demonstrations of such independence, he
must surrender his conception of what is the ultimate ideal of
reason.

4 -

This last observation leads directly to the second division of
Mr. Blanshard’s arguments, which attempts to show that every
universal is internally related to every other.

One approaches the discussion of this part of Mr. Blanshard’s
thesis in the cheerful hope that the obscurities surrounding the
claim that concrete things are internally related to one another
will no longer plague us. For there is a fairly clear sense in which
relations between universals may be said to be internal to their
natures. Thus, the relational property of having an area greater

Sovereign Reason [ 281 ]

than that of any other closed plane figure with the same perimeter
may be said to be internal to a Euclidean circle, because this prop-
erty is logically entailed by the nature of Euclidean circles. On
the other hand, the character of having radii of four feet is not
internal to Euchdean circles, because neither this character nor
any of its contraries are logically implied by that universal. In
this sense of the word ‘‘internal” it would appear therefore that
some universals are internally related while others are not, so that
in consequence the doctrine of internal relations ought to be
judged as false.

However, Mr. Blanshard does not permit us to decide the merits
of the doctrine so quickly. For he makes plain that he is affirming
the vahdity of the doctrine for what he designates as “concrete
universals,” not for the “false” or “abstract” universals of which
examples have just been given. To be sure, this qualification car-
ries with it at least the tacit acknowledgment that the doctrine is
false when abstract universals are taken to fall within its scope,
and so much at any rate may perhaps be regarded as settled. And
since, as I believe, it is with the interrelations of abstract uni-
versals that discursive thought (in the sciences and elsewhere) is
primarily concerned, an ideal of reason that is based on the pre-
sumed truth of the doctrine that concrete universals are internally
related does not appear to be obviously relevant to the normal
operations of reflective inquiry. But I must also confess that I am
quite unclear as to what one is to understand by the phrase “con-
crete universals,” if the expression does not signify concrete indi-
viduals in all their manifold relations and dependencies; and if
this is at least approximately the meaning of the phrase, all the
obscurities which attend the doctrine of internal relations when
applied to individuals make their unwelcome reappearance when
the doctrine is applied to concrete universals.

However, this may be, Mr. Blanshard defends his claim that all
universals are internally related, chiefly by trying to dispose of a
number of standard objections to this thesis. His replies to these
objections bring to a focus several crucial questions, and I shall
therefore examine two series of representative comments he makes
that bear upon them.

(i) A typical criticism of the doctrine, formulated by Mr.
Blanshard runs as follows: “Certain abstractions in the field of

[ 282 ] Sovereign Reason

quantity, for example the number three, remain the same and un-
aJffected through every possible embodiment, and in every pos-
sible context/’^2 2 nt since the embodiment of such umversals does
not necessarily involve the embodiment of other abstract charac-
ters, the former are not internally related to the latter. Hence
not all universals are internally related.

Mr. Blanshard counters this criticism with a threefold rejoinder.

(a) His first comment is that the alleged independence of the
number three from context is not an independence in all respects,
“for it is so intimately bound up with the other members of the
number series that if its relations to any one of them were al-
tered, if three were no longer greater than two, for example, or
less than four, it would simply vanish.”^^ I am afraid, however,
that Mr. Blanshard is here scoring only against m3n:hical oppo-
nents and against those who confuse the contradictory of a prop-
osition with its contrary. His present remark carries no weight
against those of his critics who, in denying that all relations of
the number three are internal to its nature, do not deny that some
of its relations are internal.

(b) The second part of Mr. Blanshard’s rejoinder asserts that
“identity in difference” creeps into even purely arithmetical anal-
ysis. According to him, the equation “3 = 2 i” asserts that “in
some respect or other the two sides are the same.” But if the two
sides are “merely and abstractly the same, i.e., the same with no
difference at all,” a distinction is asserted without difference; and
if they are “merely different,” the equation asserts what is not,
for the equation “expressly declares that they are not different
wholly.”^^

I have not been able to discover what direct bearing these re-
marks have on the question whether all the relations of the number
three are internal to it. The remarks do reveal, however, a common
mistake in analysis, the mistake of confusing a sign with what the
sign expresses. The essential point to note is that the equation
“3 = 2 -f- I ” is a complex linguistic sign, whose two members
are different symbolic expressions. What the equation asserts (as-
suming that it is not being used to state the nominal definition of

12. Ibid, p. 471.

13. Ibid., p. 472.

14. Ibid.

Sovereign Reason [ 283 ]

the numeral “3”)^ that the number referred to by its left-hand
member is identically the same as the number described by the
right-hand member, where the descriptive phrase describes the
number in terms of a certain operation upon two other numbers.
The identity in difference which Mr. Blanshard finds in the equa-
tion thus reduces itself to the following: the same number is de-
noted by two different expressions. But surely this fact cannot be
used to cast doubt on the claims of Mr. Blanshard’s critics that a
universal may appear in two different contexts without under-
going any alteration in its nature.

(c) The remaining part of Mr. Blanshard’s rejoinder asserts
that the alleged indifference of abstracted quantities to concrete
contexts is simply the consequence of a definition and cannot
therefore be taken as decisive evidence against his view. He thus
declares that

when it is asked whether . . . purely numerical differences, or the assem-
blies of them of which the several numbers are composed, depend on the
special differences of the terms, the answer presumablv is No. But does
this prove that there are purely numerical differences in nature? It is
hard to see that it does. All that it shows is that if one defines one’s units
as independent of special differences, then they will be independent of
special differences. It does not show that one’s definition corresponds to
anything in reality

This curious comment seems to me a child of desperation. Mr.
Blanshard is apparently not denying that the number three is a
universal. But if the number is a universal, and if its presumed
logical independence from various other universals with which it
may sometimes be conjoined is simply the consequence of its
definition, just how, one would like to know, is the number to be
conceived so that this logical independence is irrelevant for under-
standing the true nature of three^ Moreover, what good reasons
are there for doubting that the number three as defined corre-
sponds, or may correspond, to something in reality.^ When we
discover that two sets of elements in nature (say, the individuals
gathered to play Beethoven’s Opus 70, No. i, and the principal
planets whose orbits are interior to the orbit of Mars) can be
matched in a one-to-one fashion, do we not discover a genuine
fact in the real~a fact which is expressed by saying that the two

15 Ibid., p 473

[ 284 ] Sovereign Reason

sets possess the common cardinal number three^ The obvious
truth seems to be that the cardinal numbers, like other universals,
are properties of groups of elements that are invariants under
certain transformations and conditions; and although they are prop-
erties which can be defined, the fact that they are invariants is not
simply a matter of definition. Nor does the assumption that car-
dinal numbers are invariants entail the conclusion that “there are
purely numerical differences in nature.” On the contrary, they
could not very well be invariants unless the groups of things which
they characterize were distinguishable in various respects. Ac-
cordingly, to say that the cardinals are invariants is simply another
way of saying that they are not internally related to every other
character with which they may jointly occur.

(2) Mr. Blanshard’s rejoinder to one criticism of the theory of
internal relations thus seems to me to be somewhat less than con-
clusive. I now turn to his comments upon a second objection,
which maintains that we can have adequate knowledge of a uni-
versal (say redheadedness) without knowing all its relations to
every other universal that might be exemplified by the individuals
possessing the first— for example, without knowing all the relations
of redheadedness to the mental and bodily traits of redheaded
people. The crux of Mr. Blanshard’s reply to this is that while we
can, and do, have some knowledge of redheadedness without know-
ing all its relations, we cannot know “red-headedness fully and as
it really is without such knowledge.”^®

This reply is certainly conclusive if the phrase “to have full
knowledge” simply means to know all the relations of a char-
acter; and perhaps at bottom Mr. Blanshard does rest his case on
what is essentially a stipulation as to his use of language. Never-
theless, there are some indications that he is aiming at a less arbi-
trary disposition of a serious criticism of his views. For he declares
that the “red-headedness now explicitly presented to thought” is
not “all there is to that attribute as it exists in the nature of things,”
since an idea “always points beyond itself; it always means more
than it is; it always refers to more than it includes within the
circle of its explicit content.”^*^ He continues:

r6. Ibid,, p. 488.
17. Ibid,, p. 489.

Sovereign Reason [ 285 ]

Red-headedness is an integral part of an organism, and indeed is so
bound up, for example, with the structure of hair-fibres, and this in turn
with all manner of constitutional factors determining racial and indi-
vidual differences that our common notion of it supplies scarcely more
than a sign-post to its real or ultimate nature, i.e., to what it is as em-
bedded m Its own context.^®

But do these explanations remove the force of the criticism? I
think not, and for the following reasons:

(a) In the first place, the point of the criticism (namely, that
one could have adequate knowledge of redheadedness without
knowing all its relations) does not reside in the claim that the
redheadedness explicitly presented to thought is “all there is” to
this character; at any rate, there are many who raise that objec-
tion to Mr. Blanshard’s thesis and at the same time deny such a
claim. The point of the criticism is that the adequacy of one’s
knowledge of redheadedness is to be measured in terms of its
relevance to the specific problems which may generate inquiry
into that character. There are, however, many distinct problems
which may generate such inquiry, and not just one all-encompass-
ing difficulty; and there is no good reason to suppose that what
may be an adequate resolution of one problem is either adequate
or relevant to every other. The problem a readheaded woman
faces who wishes to adorn herself attractively is not the problem
which may agitate the physiologist or geneticist, and neither of
these problems coincides with the question that a student of the
physics of color may put to himself. Why should one imagine that
these various problems are simply limited aspects of one inclusive
problem, or that the several answers to them are necessarily rele-
vant to one another^ And why should one suppose, in advance of
specific inquiry y that in the attempt to answer any one question
about redheadedness one is inevitably and necessarily led to the
consideration of every relation in which that character stands to
others?

(b) I come to my second reason. A customary way of dis-
tinguishing between umversals and concrete individuals is to say
that the former, unlike the latter, are capable of repeated exempli-
fication and are often definable. But according to Mr. Blanshard,
redheadedness is no more repeatable and definable than are the

18. Ibid , p. 490.

[ 286 ] Sovereign Reason

individuals who may happen to illustrate it. For if I read him
aright, the redheadedness embodied in Frederick Barbarossa is
regarded by him to have a ‘‘real or ultimate nature’^ which is
different from the nature of redheadedness embodied in one of
Barbarossa’s ancestors. And if this is so, in what sense is the red-
headedness Mr. Blanshard is discussing a universal, and in what
way are his remarks relevant to the criticism he is nominally dis-
cussing?

(c) I have one final point in this connection. Mr. Blanshard is
presumably considering the question whether all of the relations
which redheadedness may have to other characters are internal
to redheadedness. His aim must therefore be to determine whether,
if an individual A is redheaded, it logically follows that A possesses
every one of the traits it does in fact possess— for example, that A
is blue-eyed, brachycephalic, right-handed, and so on. But what
he is actually discussing is the question whether these other traits
are causally related to A^s hair being reddish in color. Now while
it may indeed be the case that the occurrence of redheadedness has
causal conditions and consequences, it is a complete non sequitur
to conclude from this fact that the characters causally connected
with redheadedness are internally related to it— it is a conclusion
which is warranted only if it can be shown, what thus far Mr.
Blanshard has not shown, that logical entailment is an essential
ingredient in all causal relations.

I must therefore conclude that Mr. Blanshard does not estab-
lish his claim that the relations of universals are ail internal, whether
the universals are taken to be concrete or abstract. In particular,
he presents no plausible reasons for doubting that the demonstra-
tions contained in the modem literature of logic and mathematics
concerning the logical independence of various universals do prove
what they say they do. The challenge that these demonstrations
offer to the doctrine of internal relations is certainly not a negligible
one; and one of the strange anomalies of his defense of the doc-
trine is that he addresses himself to it only incidentally.

5 *

I have now examined two of Mr. Blanshard’s three classes of
arguments for the doctrine of internal relations. There remains
for consideration his third group, which attempts to find support

Sovereign Reason [ 287 ]

for the doctrine in the alleged nature of causal relations. Two
important claims are made by him in this connection. The first is
that “all things are causally related, directly or indirectly’’; and
the second is that “being causally related involves being logically
related.”^^ I shall, however, not stop to examine the evidence Mr.
Blanshard offers for the first claim, chiefly because if, as I hope to
show, his grounds for the second are insufficient to establish it,
his first claim even if sound would not by itself suffice to prove
the doctrine of internal relations. Certainly many thinkers have
held that all things are causally related but have rejected the doc-
trine without demonstrated inconsistency.

Three lines of evidence are presented by Mr. Blanshard to show
that causal connections involve logical necessity.

(i) In the first he maintains that whenever we engage in de-
ductive inference, “the fact that the ground entails the conse-
quent is one of the conditions determining the appearance of this
consequent rather than something else in the thinker’s mind.”^^
Accordingly, the answer to the question “Why does the conclu-
sion of an argument appear in the mind of a reasoner?” is that
the thought of the premise, which constitutes the cause (or part
of the cause) for the occurrence of the thought of the conclu-
sion, logically necessitates this latter thought. There is therefore
an element of logical necessity relating the cause and the effect.

Mr. Blanshard appears to take much stock in this argument, for
he has used it on more than one occasion to win assent for his
views. Nevertheless, I find it singularly unimpressive.

(a) It is not an unfamiliar fact that at least in some cases when
a man thinks of a premise he subsequently thinks of a proposi-
tion which, though he believes it to be the logical consequence of
the premise, is in fact not a valid consequence at all. If we admit
that in such cases the thought of the premise is a cause (or part of
the cause) of the thought of the conclusion, we must also admit
that thoughts may be causally related, though the propositions to
which these thoughts are addressed do not stand to each other in
the relation of logical entaihnent. There is therefore some ground
for believing that the presence of the implicative relation between

19. /^id,,p.492.

20.

4

[ 288 ] Sovereign Reason

propositions is not a sine qua non for the alleged causal connection
between thoughts about those propositions.

It is also well known that men often entertain propositions with
a view to deducing conclusions from them but nevertheless fail
to do so, even though various conclusions may in fact be entailed
by the premises. Evidently the presence of the implicative relation
between propositions, therefore, is not a sufficient condition for
the causal determination of a thought about a conclusion by a
thought about the premises.

It sometimes happens, moreover, that each of two men will think
of a premise and also come to think of a conclusion implied by it,
where one of the thinkers perceives the logical connection between
the propositions while the other, luckily hitting upon the conclu-
sion, does not obtain it by following the chain of logical implica-
tion. Such a situation is almost ideal for the application of the
familiar canons of induction; and if we rely on the Method of
Difference, we must conclude that though the thought of one
proposition may be the cause (or part of the cause) of the thought
of a second implied by the first, the relation of implication is not
an element in the causal transaction. Contrary to Mr. Blanshard’s
contention, his argument thus supplies no credible reasons for
supposing that causal connections involve logical necessity.

(b) There is, however, an even more serious flaw in his argument.
What is it, we must ask, which is properly characterized as “neces-
sary” when what is called a “necessary inference” is drawn.^ When,
for example, we draw the conclusion that Smith is younger than
Brown from the premise that Brown is older than Smith, is it the in-
ference which is necessary, or is it the proposition that if Brown is
older than Smith then Smith is younger than Brown^ The answer is
clearly in favor of the second alternative. For it is of the proposition^
not of the inference, that it is correct to say: it is necessary because it
is impossible for its antecedent to be true and its consequent false;
it is not at all impossible for an inference to occur whose ante-
cedent is true and its consequent false. In characterizing an infer-
ence as necessary we are thus using an elliptic form of ^eech, and
the phrase “necessary inference” must be construed as signifying
the fact that the consequent of a necessary conditional proposition
is being deduced from its antecedent.

Accordingly, to argue that the causal relation between the

Sovereign Keason [ 289 ]

thought of a premise and the thought of the conclusion (when the
premise entails the conclusion) involves logical necessity is to
confuse the thought of a necessary relation with the necessity of
a thought, it is to confound the nontemporal logical relation of
entailment or implication with the temporal process of inference
that recognizes or discovers such implicative relations.

Mr. Blanshard is not unaware of this apparently fatal objection
to his argument. But his reply to it is regrettably not to the point
and succeeds only in raising irrelevant issues. His rejoinder con-
siders the objection as if the latter rested on the assumption that
causal connections hold between “mere event [s], endowed with
no sort of character”, and in opposition to this assumption he
maintains, quite rightly, that the “contents or characters of events”
enter into causal processes. He therefore concludes that the logical
relations between these characters also enter into these processes
and declares: “In explicit inference we have a process in which we
can directly see not only that one event succeeds another, but in
large measure it succeeds.”^^

But just what is the pertinence of these remarks to the matter at
stake^^ For suppose we admit that the thoughts which are said to
be causally related in inference are not naked events, stripped of
all characters. It does not follow from this admission alone that
the logical relations between the objects of those thoughts enter
into the causal processes involving those thoughts; and it cer-
tainly does not follow from that admission that it is the thoughts
as existents, rather than the propositions to which those thoughts
may be addressed, which logically imply one another. Mr. Blan-
shard cannot be acquitted of the charge that he is confusing im-
plication with inference.

Moreover, is it the case that we do directly see, as Mr. Blanshard
maintains, vchy in an explicit inference one event follows an-
other^ Do we see vchy^ when we think of Brown as older than
Smith, we subsequently think that Smith is younger than Brown?
It has already been noted that though the first proposition entails
the second, the thought of the first is not invariably followed by
the thought of the second; and it is not unreasonable to suppose
therefore that the causal sequence of such thoughts involves the

21, Ibid jP 497.

22. p. 498.

[ 290 ] Sovereign Reason

operation of a complicated physiological and psychological mech-
anism, whose detailed structure and conditions of effective per-
formance are still only partly understood. Accordingly, there
seems to be some basis for the suspicion that when Mr, Blanshard
believes he sees vohy one event in inference is followed by another,
and not merely that there is such a succession, he is being deceived
by the happy working of his own body into identifying his
prehension of necessary relations with an alleged necessity of his
apprehending those relations.

(c) There is one other aspect of Mr. Blanshard’s discussion that
requires brief comment. For he believes that serious consequences
for morals and the life of reason follow from the denial that logical
necessity is involved in causal relations; and he declares that “unless
necessity does play a part in the movement of inference, no argu-
ment will establish anything, since on the hypothesis that no
such necessity exists the distinction between being “moved by
reasons” and being moved by causes is simply an illusion.

Now, no doubt, all who love the life of the intellect and hate
brutal unreason will recoil in horror from any philosophy which
would deny this distinction. But can one retain it only on Mr.
Blanshard’s terms and only within the framework of his philos-
ophy? Surely not. Why is it impossible to be moved by reasons
if the temporal passage from premise to conclusion in a valid
inference does not involve a relation of logical necessity? A man
who first notes a premise Ay and then perceives that A logically
implies B, is moved by reasons when he accepts B on the evidence
of the premise— even if the causal sequence, the thought of Ay the
perception of the connection between A and B, the assertion of By
is a logically contingent one. Such a thinker might not assert B
did he not perceive the connection between A and B; and his per--
ception of this connection is doubtless one of the factors which
causally determine his thought and acceptance of B. But is there
any reason for maintaining that if the connection between this
factor and the effect attributed to it is a logically contingent one,
its manifest operation is illusory?

(2) So much for Mr. Blanshard's first argument for the presence
of logical necessity in causal relations. He next comes to alleged
cases of such necessity in mental activities other than inference.

23. Ibidn

Sovereign Reason [ 291 1

And he offers as an example of such necessity the proposition that
all who think lightly of their own deserts are grateftil, in which,
according to himself, both a causal and a logical connection is
asserted between low self-esteem and gratefulness for the esteem
of others.^^

As far as I can make out, Mr, Blanshard rests his case that this
is so on the alleged fact that though “one cannot isolate in human
nature the precise reciprocating conditions of gratitude, or formu-
late one’s law in anything better than a statement of tendency,”
nevertheless “we do have some insight into why the man of low
self-esteem should be grateful for the esteem of others.”^® He
therefore cites with approval Ewing’s assertion:

It seems to me that we can see and to some extent really understand why
an msult should tend to give rise to anger, why love should lead to grief
if the object of one’s love die or prove thoroughly unworthy, why a
success should give pleasure, why the anticipation of physical pain should
arouse fear. It does seem more reasonable on other than inductive grounds
to suppose that if A loves B that will tend to make him sorry when B
dies than to suppose that it will make him intensely glad.

I will not venture to challenge Mr, Blanshard’s contention that
in such matters as he mentions he does possess an “insight” into
the presence of a necessary logical bond, especially since he speci-
fies no general rules that might serve to define the character of
that necessity. If he does have the insight, he must be congratu-
lated on possessing what is surely a rare power. However, Mr,
Blanshard himself admits that the alleged law connecting low self-
esteem and gratitude states only a “tendency,” not an invariable
connection, to which therefore exceptions may (and presumably
do) occur. And I confess that the sense in which a law expressing
only such a tendency also expresses a logical necessity is to me
entirely obscure.

Moreover, it is surely no news that many men with a low self-
esteem exhibit an attitude quite the reverse of gratitude for the
esteem of others, Spinoza had suggested as much, and in the light
of contemporary psychological investigations the absence of feel-
ings of gratitude in such cases appears eminently plausible. The
chief point to note, however, is that whether a certain type of

24. Ihid^p^soo*

25. Ibid*

[ 2^2 ] Sovereign Reason

human response to an indicated situation appears ‘‘reasonable” and
“logically necessary” or not, is a function of what theory of human
nature is explicitly or implicitly assumed. But one must not over-
look the crucial fact that though many propositions about human
action may be necessary consequences from the main principles
of the theory, neither those principles nor those propositions are
logically necessary truths. For example, Mr. Ewing’s example of
love for a person leading to grief if that person dies is a theorem
in Spinoza’s Ethics; but its “necessity” is relative to the postulates
of this system, postulates which, if they are true, are clearly only
contingently true.

Apropos of the suggestion that certain general propositions about
human actions are “reasonable” inherently and “on other than
inductive grounds,” I must add the obvious but unfortunately still
needed reminder that the pages of the history of thought are
strewn with exploded claims concerning the “necessary” char-
acter of various “truths” alleged to be revealed to immediate
vision. The tendency to see something final and necessary in what
subsequently turns out to be transitory and contingent has been
no minor hindrance to the development of knowledge, especially
in the social and moral disciplines. To be sure, Mr. Blanshard’s
claim to have discovered such logically necessary propositions about
human actions may meet a better fate than have similar claims by
countless other men. It is nevertheless curious that such a claim
should come from one who, in terms of his professed philosophy,
might be expected to deny that necessity and self-evidence char-
acterize propositions isolated from their relations to some system
in which they are elements.

(3) I turn finally to Mr. Blanshard’s discussion of the question
whether logical necessity is present even in the causal processes
found in physical nature, which clearly constitutes what is perhaps
the most crucial part of the defense of his general thesis. However,
his discussion is predicated on the assumption that only two views
as to the nature of causal connections are possible, one represented
by what is known as the regularity view, the other by the con-
ception which he himself favors. He therefore devotes his best
eiforts to a criticism of the regularity view, in the apparent belief
that if he can exhibit its inadequacy he will thereby have estab-
lished the validity of his own conception. Unfortunately for the

Sovereign Reason [ 293 ]

argument, the two alternative analyses Mr. Blanshard considers
do not exhaust the possibilities; in fact, a number of contempo-
rary writers (for example, Cohen, Dewey, Parker, and at one time
Broad), have offered accounts of causality which are incompatible
both with the regularity and the entailment views. Accordmgly,
even if Mr. Blanshard’s reasons for rejecting the regularity view
were entirely cogent, he would still not have produced compelling
evidence for adopting his own analysis of causahty.

In what follows I shall therefore not consider his criticisms of
the regularity view, and shall restrict myself to examining the
few grounds he presents for the entailment view. These grounds
are, I think, just two in number.

(a) Mr. Blanshard requires of any analysis of causality that it
be compatible with the fact that successful predictions concerning
the future can often be made on the basis of past observations on
the sequences of events. And he maintains that when we predict
that b will follow a in the future as it has followed in the past,
there must be a logical bond between a and b which warrants the
prediction. “Unless a is connected with b by something more than
mere conjunction,’’ he declares, “there is no ground . . . whatever”
for the argument from past to future.^®

It will be admitted, I think, that if aU causes entail their effects,
and if we knew not only this but also that a specific phenomenon
a which is suspected of being the cause of b entails the latter, then
a prediction concerning the future occurrence of b on the strength
of observing a would be fully warranted. However, if we knew
only that the entailment view is true but did not know that a
logically implies b (though events of the type a may have been ob-
served in the past to be followed by the events of type b)^ we would
certainly not possess what Mr. Blanshard would regard as rationally
satisfactory grounds for predicting the future occurrence of b
as an effect of a. Evidently, therefore, the acceptance of the en-
tailment view of causality is not sufficient for justifying any par-
ticular prediction.

But though some defenders of the entailment view claim to have
an “insight” into the logical structures of specific causal processes
in physical nature, Mr. Blanshard makes no such pretensions; he
modestly limits his own claims to matters pertaining to mental

26. p. 507.

[ 294 ^ Sovereign Reason

actions. And there is little doubt that most men who venture to
predict physical occurrences also lack such insight. What then
can the entadment view of causality, assuming that it is the correct
view, offer to Mr. Blanshard and the rest of mankind in the way
of a ^'rational justification” of predictive inferences? Must not he,
like everybody else, fall back upon the evidence provided by past
conjunctions of characteristics to support the hypothesis that they
may be causally related? Is he any better off in this respect than
are those who subscribe to the regularity view of causality? Must
we not conclude that the entailment view contributes nothing
toward advancing the aims of specific inquiries into the causal
dependencies of physical nature, that it provides no rational foun-
dation for the successful predictions that are often made, and that
therefore Mr. Blanshard’s present line of reasoning supplies no
support for the entailment view?

(b) Mr. Blanshard’s remaining argument for the entailment view
rests upon a consideration of general statements about causality
(such as the maxim ‘'Same cause, same effect”), rather than upon
a study of specific causal propositions (such as that the earth’s
rotation is the cause of day and night). He maintains that we can
safely assert such general propositions about causality because we
possess an “insight” that justifies our doing so. This insight con-
sists in recognizing that “when a is said to produce x in virtue of
its nature as the connection referred to is not only an intrinsic
relation but a necessary relation.”^'^ And as he goes on to explain,
“To say that a produces x in virtue of being a and yet that, given
X might not follow, is inconsistent with the laws of identity and
contradiction.” For is not a mere “cluster of qualities abstracted
from their relations”; on the contrary,

d^s behavior is the outgrowth or expression of ^’s nature. And to assert
that ds behavior, so conceived, could be different while a was the same
would be to assert that sometiung both did and did not issue from the
nature of a. And that is self-contradiction. The statement would also
. . . conflict with the law of identity. It implies that a thing may remain
itself when you have stripped from it everything which it is such as
to be and do. To strip it of these things would be to strip it, so to speak,
of the suchness that makes it what it is, i.e., to say that it is other than
it is.^

27 .

28 , Ibid^pp.

Sovereig 7 i Reason [ 295 ]

Old acquaintances thus greet us once more, the puzzle as to
what is to be included in a thing and the obscure notion of a
thing’s nature. Let us make one final effort to penetrate mto these
mysteries, by applying Mr. Blanshard’s present argument to the
proposition that Brutus caused the death of Caesar. On that argu-
ment, Brutus’ action was the outgrowth of Brutus’ special nature,
and to suppose that Brutus had not acted as he in fact did would
be to strip him of the “suchness” that made him what he was. The
argument thus requires us to say that the compound proposition,
Brutus did cause the death of Caesar but it is nevertheless logi-
cally possible for Brutus not to have done so, is logically impos-
sible More briefly and generally, Mr. Blanshard’s position as
revealed by the present argument reduces to this: every true prop-
osition which imputes a causal action to Brutus is logically neces-
sary.

This is certainly an amazing conclusion. But is it true? It can be
shown to be true if, and only if, the individual Brutus is conceived
as including every possible attribute that may be truly predicated
of him, while at the same time the nature of Brutus is equated with
the total set of characters Brutus is thus made to include. In short,
it can be shown to be true only by a violent redefinition of the
expressions “individual” and “the nature of an individual.” But as
I have tried to show earlier, by this device Mr. Blanshard’s entire
thesis is reduced to a trivial tautology.

I therefore conclude that Mr. Blanshard’s heroic efforts in be-
half of the doctrine of internal relations have failed of their in-
tended objective. He has not succeeded in showing that contin-
gency is not an irreducible feature of the world, and in urging upon
men an ideal of reason which ignores this character of things he
must be judged as an advocate of a false and irrelevant ideal. The
vision he has called up of the scope and office of human reason is
not without grandeur and inspiring power, and its insistence on
system and rational order reveals its sources in human aspirations.
But like all visions which feed on uncontrolled and exaggerated
hopes and fancies, it is a vision that cannot permanently serve to
guide the energies of sober men.

i6

The Perspectives of Science and
The Prospects of Men

Th^ ARE TWO MODES in which human life is influenced by new
developments in theoretical science. Since the beginnings of sys-
tematic inquiry in classical antiquity, advances in fundamental
knowledge have prepared the way for a more effective practical
mastery of the environment; and the technological innovations to
which they frequently give rise— in agriculture, industry, medicine,
or warfare— have produced radical transformations in traditional
patterns of social living. This aspect of science is now a common-
place in the writings of modem historians and students of human
affairs. It is certainly not neglected in recent popular literature on
the wonders wrought by present-day inventions. Indeed, many
distinguished scientists with an attentive eye on the ultimate source
of financial support for pure research are now stressing the practical
fruits often gathered from investigations which initially do not

[ 296 ]

The Perspectives of Science [ 297 ]

promise such a harvest, and the utilitarian values of science un-
doubtedly loom large in the minds of those who today eventually
foot the staggering costs of modern research. However, there is a
second and less publicized way in which scientific developments
affect men’s lives: by challenging established beliefs about the
cosmos and its parts, and inducing emendations in habitual modes
of thought. Revisions of ancient creeds and alterations in intellectual
habits are not exclusively the products of major theoretical revolu-
tions like those of Newton and Darwin, they may also be called
forth by relatively minor additions to knowledge like those asso-
ciated with voyages of exploration and the study of ancient or
primitive cultures. The flood of books and articles in our own day
on the bearing of current scientific discoveries upon inherited con-
ceptions of nature and man is visible testimony to this aspect of the
impact of science on human life.

Although there are different channels through which scientific
developments exert their influence, changes in knowledge eventu-
ally lead to a re-examination of the ideals which express man’s basic
aspirations, of the principles by which men evaluate their actions,
and of the methods which men employ in deciding between alterna-
tive moral claims. Technological innovations of any magnitude often
make it difficult, if not impossible, to continue customary modes of
conduct; and they may produce fashions of living that are not
congruous with, or are not envisaged by, traditional moral ideals.
Moreover, though new theoretical and factual discoveries do not
always introduce any overt changes in social practice, they may
nevertheless become highly pertinent in the evaluation of social
policy and in the justification of moral attitudes. An ideal of human
life which seems eminently reasonable on one set of factual assump-
tions may be utterly without cogency when viewed in the per-
spective of altered scientific conclusions. Accordingly, an integrated
system of moral commitments can be disrupted by developments
in science, and, individually as well as collectively, men are some-
times made distraught by felt incompatibilities between traditional
moral standards and new advances in knowledge. Reflective men
are thus perennially confronted with a threefold task of criticism:
of clarifying the bearing of trends in scientific inquiry upon perva-
sive conceptions of man’s place in nature; of making explicit the
intellectual methods by which responsibly held beliefs are achieved;

[ 298 ] Sovereign Reason

and of interpreting inherited beliefs and institutions in the light of
current additions to knowledge— aU this, in order to exhibit the
enduring wisdom which may be embodied in them.

It has been the traditional office of philosophy, whether lay or
professional, to contribute to this difficult task. Professional philos-
ophers frequently engage in heated debate concerning the subject
matter and the problems that are proper to their discipline. Al-
though their conclusions are often in sharp disagreement with each
other, the record of history leaves little room for doubt as to what
in the main their ultimate concern has been. Indeed, even the recur-
rent disputes over the legitimate scope and method of philosophy
illustrate the conception of philosophy as a critical commentary
on science, and as a continuing interpretation of human experience
in the perspective of fresh scientific achievements. It is certainly a
striking fact that some of the most brilliant periods in the history
of Western philosophy coincide with eras during which frontiers
of knowledge were being pushed back vigorously. It is hardly an
accident that the flowering of philosophic thought in Greek an-
tiquity came on the heels of fundamental discoveries in mathe-
matics and biology; that the influential speculative and critical
philosophies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were pro-
duced during the decades which saw the rise and consolidation of
modem physical science; or that the ambitious philosophies of evo-
lution in the nineteenth century were developed at a time when
knowledge of the human past as well as of the history of other
forms of organic life was being rapidly expanded. The adequacy
of these various philosophies as systems of warranted truth is a
matter of controversy, upon which general agreement is hardly
likely in the foreseeable future. These systems, nevertheless, exhibit
the historical role of philosophy as the examination of the signifi-
cance of science for human weal and woe; and this role is easily
discerned in the literature of contemporary philosophy as well In
a readily identifiable sense, all of philosophy has been, and con-
tinues to be, a critique of science. And while what is today com-
monly designated as the philosophy of science is the investigation
of a loosely defined set of special problems, the boundaries of the
philosophy of science are in fact the boundaries of philosophy itself.

For several decades, however, in Western Europe and America,
philosophical reflection on science has been largely directed to logi-

The Perspectives of Science [ 299 ]

cal and methodological issues generated both by the remarkable
theoretical innovations of physical science and by new approaches
in the study of human society. These developments have not only
upset deeply rooted certainties concerning the structure of the
physical universe and the behavior of the human individual; they
have also compelled a re-examination of supposedly firm critena
of intelligibility and the grounds of cognitive certitude. Euclidean
geometry has been displaced from its age-old status as the only
conceivable foundation for a comprehensive theory of nature. A
system of chronometry has been introduced which is sharply at
variance with customary notions of temporal order. Apparently
cogent reasons have been found for curtailing the scope of regula-
tive and constitutive principles, like those of causality and con-
tinuity, which have long been regarded as paradigms of absolute
universality and necessity. Evidence has accumulated for concep-
tions concerning the springs of human action which are deeply
disturbing to widely held assumptions about the basis of human
rationality and responsible action. And comprehensive theoretical
explanations of newly discovered phenomena have become current
which, despite their enormous success in accounting for detailed
facts, postulate an executive order of nature that seems alien to
human experience and appears paradoxical even to expertly skilled
scientists.

It is not altogether surprising that intellectual changes of the
magnitude here only briefly indicated have found interpreters who
see in the latest findings of science renewed grounds for comfort-
ing superstitutions, or who defend in the very name of science itself
creeds to which the use of a disciplined but free intelligence is
basically hateful. If such interpretations seem plausible to many,
this is partly because scientiks have in the main failed to clarify for
themselves as well as for others the actual content of their new
theories and the rationale of their inteUectual methods. Indeed,
distinguished workers in the sciences have themselves sometimes
supplied commentaries on current reorientations in scientific theory
that are at best examples of uncontrolled fancy, and are frequently
exercises in obscurantism. This situation is not quite as anomalous
as it may appear at first glance. To be sure, skill and understanding
are at their best, as Santayana noted, when they adorn the same

[ 300 ] Sovereign Reason

mind. Nor is there much doubt that perhaps the most illuminating
analyses of scientific achievements and procedure have been made
by philosophical-minded practicing scientists. What is loosely
called “scientific method,” however, is generally a habit of work-
manship that skilled investigators possess, and not a codified set of
principles which they exphcitly acknowledge. Those who are suc-
cessfully engaged in specialized research usually show no serious
interest m methodological analysis which does not contribute di-
rectly to the solution of specific research tasks. Their philosophy of
science is often hardly more than the echo of philosophic ideas
uncritically acquired during their early schooling. There is little
agreement among scientific workers on the broad significance of
their theories or on the logic of their procedure, despite their re-
markable virtuosity in handling complex intellectual tools, and in
striking contrast to the eventual unanimity which they achieve on
solutions for specific technical problems. There are, indeed, no
uniform standards of competent workmanship, whether among
scientists or professional philosophers, which control the analysis
of such matters. There is still lacking a generally adequate tech-
nique for unravelling the enormously complex maze of symbolism
involved in the construction and the use of scientific theory.

The symbolic nature of scientific theory is certainly not a recent
discovery. Nevertheless, the subtle and indirect ways in which
theories function as schemata of representation have not been
widely noted or appreciated until fairly recently. A century ago,
it was common to think of a theory— even a theory in physics— as
an inductive generalization derived by abstraction from directly
observed occurrences. A theory was assumed to be simply a com-
pact description of regularities that obtain between phenomena.
The successful development of theories which ostensibly postulate
inherently unobservable entities and processes made evident the
superficiality of this account. For a time the view then became
prevalent that postulations of “unobservables” are nothing but con-
venient though fictional modes of speech. This amended version of
the “simple description” notion of theory became incredible, how-
ever, when impressive experimental evidence was found for the
“reality” of molecules, atoms, electrons, and the like. Many think-
ers have therefore concluded that the fundamental theories of

The Perspectives of Science [ 301 ]

modern physics and chemistry are about an order of things and
events that are existentially and causally prior to the things and
events encountered in daily life.

The unobservable but basic entities of nature, however, osten-
sibly possess few if any of the traits that characterize the objects
of familiar experience. Moreover, they seem in many respects to
be incommensurably unlike the latter. The relation of the “world”
of gross experience to the “world” disclosed by physics thus be-
came an acute problem. Some writers resolved it by relegating one
or the other of these “worlds” to a realm of metaphysical appear-
ance. Others sought to overcome it by construing the postulated
scientific objects in terms of the categories of human experience,
and thereby clothing the unobservable entities of physics with
properties analogous to those distinctive of the human organism.
Still others solved it by postulating a progressive evolution or
emergence of levels of being. But the proposed solutions raise more
issues than they settle, and they are all based on the dubious assump-
tion that each constituent part of a theory is the intellectual image
of an identifiable item in the subject matter of mqury. On this
assumption a theory is therefore a description of some fixed realm
of ultimate fact. But the assumption simply ignores the complex
structure of theoretical symbolism. Those who make this assump-
tion fail to appreciate the flexible uses of theoretical expressions,
the variety of special meanings which are associated with them in
different contexts of inquiry, the multiple regulative roles which
theories play, or the different logical functions which grammatically
similar statements may possess. These matters are more fully under-
stood at present. Contemporary philosophy of science has succeeded
in dispelling much of the mystery that is produced when the ellip-
tic formulations of mathematical physics are construed in a myopi-
cally literal manner.

Indeed, much of the recent literature of the philosophy of science
is a self-conscious attempt at articulating modes of symbolic sig-
nification, and a search for effective cnteria of meamngful dis-
course. This search is often controlled by the therapeutic objective
of eliminating pseudo-problems both withm science proper and in
the philosophic interpretations of science. In the pursuit of this
objective, variants of Charles Peirce’s “pragmatic maxim” for mak-
ing our ideas clear have played a prominent role. According to that

[ 302 ] Sovereign Reason

maxim, our conception of an object of thought consists entirely
of the “practical” bearings which we suppose that object to have.
The adoption of the maxim leads, on the one hand, to the rejection
as spunous of many allegedly profound puzzles raised by com-
mentators on science, and, on the other hand, to the detailed study
of scientific formulations in terms of the concrete procedures and
habits of usage that alone invest them with significance. Peirce him-
self noted, for example, that the term “force” in physics does not
represent a “mysterious entity,” as was commonly believed by
many of his contemporaries. On the contrary, the term is com-
pletely understood when its role in the equations of physics is made
explicit, and when the use in inquiry of those equations is indicated.
It is therefore absurd to claim, as many eminent scientists have
done, that while we may understand the effects of force we do not
understand what force itself is. Many thinkers in Europe and Amer-
ica, in many instances without having been exposed to the influence
of Peirce’s writings, have adopted his maxim in a variety of forms.
They have extended the type of analysis he proposed for the notion
of force to a large number of other ideas in physics, biology, psy-
chology, and social science. In consequence, fundamental contribu-
tions have been made not only to the clarification of specific theo-
retical concepts, but also to the understanding of the structure and
operation of scientific symbolism in general.

It must be acknowledged, however, that oversimplified versions
of the Peircean maxim have gained wide currency, and that injudi-
cious use of them has frequently darkened counsel. Many contem-
porary writers have supposed that a criterion of meaning contains
in capsule form the solutions for all mortal ills, and in consequence
they have made grotesque claims for their approach to the anal-
ysis of scientific discourse. Other writers have espoused simple-
minded tests of significance, and have shown themselves insensi-
tive to the influence of context upon the meaning and function of
statements. They have thereby been compelled to classify as species
of “nonsense” nearly all statements of science. But in spite of the
quantity of material, incompetent, trivial, and irrelevant, that has
been published in consequence, there has been substantial achieve-
ment as well. In the hands of analysts competently familiar with
the actual operations of scientific inquiry and with the role played
in it by theoretical constructions, the Peircean maxim in some of

The Perspectives of Science [ 303 1

its variant forms has undoubtedly been an instrument of genuine
illumination.

It is diiEcult to exaggerate in this connection the far-reaching
and salutary influence of the theory of relativity upon current
philosophy of science. For the Einsteinian critique of classical
mechanics called attention to the importance of construmg scien-
tific notions by way of the actual operations which control them
range of application; and it made impressively clear that apparently
significant statements often possess no physical content, precisely
because crucial terms occurring in them are associated with no
specified procedures of application. Einstein’s analysis also made
evident that the construction of a theory involves, among other
things, a series of decisions between alternate modes of representing
and organizing relevant features of a subject matter— for example,
in the case of mechanics, decisions between alternate geometries
and alternate chronometries. Such decisions are logically arbitrary,
since they are not implied by experimental data; they can never-
theless be evaluated in the hght of their effectiveness in systematiz-
ing fields of inquiry. Furthermore, the theory of relativity reveals
unmistakably that when the range of application of a scientific
symbol is enlarged, the symbol may undergo fundamental changes
in meaning. This has been the history of such terms as “mass” and
“energy” in physics, “species” and “image” in biology and psy-
chology, and “class” and “property” in social science. Subtle anal-
ogies may control the process of enlarging the scope of application
of a symbol. Nevertheless, it is in general a blunder to interpret the
more inclusive use of an expression in terms of its initially more
restricted meaning. It is this blunder which underlies much of the
alleged “unintelligibility” commonly attributed to modem physics.
These methodological observations are, however, pertinent for the
understanding not merely of a special physical theory but of all
theoretical constructions. They have rendered valuable service to
thinkers seeking to develop a generalized account of knowledge
that is founded on the reahties of scientific procedure and on the
actual character of scientific explanation.

The classical conception of scientific knowledge was formed
under the influence of demonstrative geometry as traditionally
taught, and rests on three fundamental assumptions: Genuine scien-
tific knowledge is demonstrative knowledge, and science seeks to

[ 304 ] Sovereign Reason

“save the phenomena” by exhibiting the events and regularities of
nature as consequences of universal truths. Secondly, since every
demonstration must start from premises which are not themselves
demonstrable, there must be transparently luminous universal truths
which the intellect can grasp as self-evident. Thirdly, if the par-
ticulars of sense are to be truly explained, the basic premises of a
science must be necessary truths, which are better known and more
certain than anything explained by them. These assumptions have
dominated scientific, philosophic, and popular thought since an-
tiquity. For example, it was a widespread supposition a half-
century ago that the axioms of Newtonian mechanics conform to
the classical requirements for the first principles of a science. The
discovery soon thereafter that the Newtonian system is not fully
adequate to the facts therefore appeared to a number of com-
mentators as a symptom of “the bankruptcy of science.”

Many thinkers continue to demand of genuine knowledge the
characteristics postulated by the classical ideal of science. The first
requirement in that ideal undoubtedly does represent a permanent
though partial objective of scientific research. But the remaining
components in that ideal are not, and cannot be, achieved by the
actual methods of any positive inquiry. Contemporary analyses of
the kind previously mentioned have shown, for example, that a
theory is never uniquely determined by any set of empirical data,
however numerous and varied these may be. Alternate explanations
are always possible in principle; and the supposition that a unique
explanatory principle is embedded in the phenomena, and shines
forth to the attentive intellect, is therefore radically mistaken. It
follows that scientific research is not a passive beholding and codify-
ing of self-evident structures in things. On the contrary, the con-
struction of theories, like the construction of works of art, makes
serious demands upon powers of imagination and invention. Scien-
tists have repeatedly noted the “free creation of concepts” embodied
in their theoretical foundations. As one of them has remarked, the
work of Newton, Leverrier, Maxwell, and Hertz “was an expres-
sion of their personality Just as surely as the work of Giotto, of
Shakespeare, or of Bach,” This does not mean that the scientist is
a demiurge who creates the things he studies. It does mean that an
explanatory theory is but one among several possible techniques for
representing and analyzing systematically an indefinitely large set

The Perspectives of Science [ 305 ]

of specific processes. When a scientific theory is constructed in
terms of its functions m inquiry, the supposition that the funda-
mental principles of a science can be established by appeals to self-
evidence is thus not even plausible. Indeed, the traditional concep-
tion of the relation between a theory and the facts it explains must
be partially reversed. A theory does make “intelhgible” the occur-
rences of nature by indicating their interrelations. Nevertheless,
the theory is itself “mtelhgible” not because of its seh-luminous
necessity and certainty, but because of the manner in which it
analyzes and organizes the concrete facts of experience. In short,
abstract theory and matters of observation mutually clarify each
other. If it is a task of science to “save the phenomena” by mabng
them intelligible in the fight of a theory, it is equally its task to
“save the abstracta” by making them intelligible in the light of the
phenomena they coordinate. Maxwell’s electro-magnetic theory,
for example, explains a host of electrical, magnetic, and opncal
phenomena. But the content of the theory becomes clear only
when it is understood how its equations are employed for directing
specific inquiries and for interpreting matters of observation.

One important outcome of this altered view of scientific knowl-
edge is a correspondingly altered conception of the grounds of
scientific certitude. Neither the first principles of a science nor the
formulations of concrete happemngs are incorrigible. And if the
findings of science are reliable, they are reliable neither because
they follow from necessarily true basic premises nor because they
are derivable from indubitable data of observation. What does
support claims to warranted knowledge is the use of a general
method (or logic) for establishing a particular claim. Inquiries
into different subject matters employ different special techniques
of investigation, but underlying them all is a common pattern of
procedure for gathering, interpreting and evaluating evidence. A
distinctive feature of this method is its doubly self-corrective char-
acter. No conclusion of an inquiry is exempt from the challenge
of further inquiry, provoked perhaps by doubts raised because of
new theoretical constructions or fresh experimental data. And every
schema for evaluating the weight of evidence is subject to revision,
if further analysis should reveal that the use of a given schema leads
to conclusions which are too frequently undependable. The quest
for certainty is perhaps an inherent aspect of the scientific enter-

[ 3o6 ] Sovereign Reason

prise. But current clarifications of the self-corrective method of
science have made evident that scientific certitude cannot be equated
with infallibility. The reliability of a scientific conclusion, it is
now clear, is a function of the thorougliness with which it has been
tested by methods that on repeated appKcation yield conclusions
in good agreement with observed fact. While any given claim to
knowledge may be mistaken, some claims are better warranted than
others; but the warrant itself ultimately derives from the character
of the general policy which science adopts for evaluating all claims.

Considerations such as these have contributed to the formation
of a naturalistic conception of human reason and scientific intelli-
gence. Scientific knowledge does not depend on the possession of
an esoteric capacity for grasping the necessary structure of some
superior reality, nor does it require modes of warranting beliefs
which are discontinuous with operations of thought, identifiable
and effective in the ordmary affairs of human life. The achieve-
ments of science are the products of a cooperative social enterprise,
which has refined and extended skills encountered in the meanest
employments of the human intellect. The principles of human
reason, far from representing the immutable traits of all possible
being, are socially cultivated standards of competent intellectual
workmanship. The life of reason as embodied in the community of
scientific effort is thus a pattern of life that generates an autonomous
yet controlling ideal. That ideal requires disciplined dedication
without servitude to any ultimate authority, imposes responsibility
for performance upon individual judgment but demands respon-
siveness to the criticism of others, and calls for adherence to a
tradition of workmanship without commitment to any system of
dogma. To many commentators, the ideals realized in the enter-
prise of science are also the ideals which are indispensable to the
successful operation of any society of free men. Many thinkers,
indeed, like John Dewey in America, have based their hopes for
the future of mankind upon the extension of the habits of scien-
tific intelligence to every stratum of communal life and to every
form of social organization.

Philosophers often suppose themselves to possess avenues to truth
—truth which is not accessible to the empirically controlled analytic
methods of the sciences. Certainly no shortage exists today of
oracular metaphysical pronouncements on the spiritual foundations

The Perspectives of Science [ ^07 ]

of the universe or on the ultimate nature and destiny of human
effort. It is not difficult to perceive the reasons why, in a period of
acute social tension such as ours, there should be large audiences
for philosophies that thrive on obscurantism and which see the
shape of things through a glass clouded by anguish and fear. To
those who seek from philosophy assurance that life is worth living
or that the universe is mindful of human aspirations, contemporary
philosophy of science has on the whole nothing significant to say.
On the other hand, it has had an unmistakable Muence on the
development of new approaches in Anglo-American psychology
and social science; and it has made an impress on a substantial ma-
jority of Anglo-American philosophers, even when them chief con-
cerns are only peripherally related to the analysis of science. A
comparison of current philosophical writing in English-speaking
countries with similar publications a half-century ago, reveals a
greater responsiveness today to the requirements of clarity and
cogency than was customary then. There is now a diminished ten-
dency to fall back on a priori methods for settling issues that can
be resolved, if they can be resolved at all, only by experimental
trial and factual study. There is less reliance today on outmoded
conceptions of scientific procedure in discussions on the theory of
knowledge. There is a greater awareness at present of the dangers
implicit in using debatable or half-digested conclusions of factual
inquiry as foundation stones for comprehensive systems of political
and ethical theory. And greater caution is now practiced when
current findings about physical or biological processes are invoked
to decide issues in moral and aesthetic analysis.

These are in the main negative achievements for which contem-
porary philosophy of science is in part responsible. But it can also
be credited with an invaluable positive achievement, quite apart
from its detailed contributions to the clarification of scientific pro-
cedures. For it has given vigorous support and expression to an
attitude, at once critical and experimental, toward the perennial as
well as the current issues of human life; and it has thereby been a
champion of the central values of liberal civilization. The basis for
a general outlook on the place of man in nature is supplied by de-
tailed knowledge of the structure of things supplied by the special
sciences— an outlook that contemporary philosophy of science has
helped to articulate and defend. In the perqjecdve of that outlook.

[ 3o8 ] Sovereign Reason

the human creature is not an autonomous empire in the vast en-
tanglement of events and forcps constituting the human environ-
ment. Nevertheless, no antecedent limits can be set to the power
of scientific reason to acquire theoretical mastery over natural and
social processes. Every doctrine which pretends to set such limits
contains within itself the seeds of intolerance and repression. More-
over, in the perspective of that scientifically grounded outlook,
human aspirations are expressions of impulses and needs which,
whether these be native or acquired, constitute the ultimate point
of reference for every justifiable moral judgment. The adequacy
of such aspirations must therefore be evaluated in terms of the
structures of human capacities and the order of human preferences.
Accordingly, though the forces of nature may one day extinguish
the human scene, those forces do not define valid human ideals,
and they do not provide the measure of human achievement. But
an indispensable condition for the just definition and the realiza-
tion of those ideals is the employment and extension of the method
of intelligence embodied in the scientific enterprise. A judicious
confidence m the power of reason to ennoble the human estate may
seem shallow to an age in which, despite the dominant position in
it of scientific technology, there is a growing and pervasive dis-
trust of the operations of free intelligence. It may indeed be the
case that the temper of mind essential to the exercise of such intel-
ligence has no immediate social future. But the cultivation of that
intellectual temper is a fundamental condition for every liberal
civilization. By making manifest the nature of scientific reason and
the grounds for a continued confidence in it, contemporary philos-
ophy of science has been a servant of men’s noblest and most
relevant ideals.

Bibliographical

Note

“Malicious Philosophies of Science” was first published in Fartisan Re-
view^ Vol. X, January-February 1943.

“Recent Philosophies of Science” was fibrst published in The Kenyon
Review, VoL III, Summer 1941.

“Philosophy and the American Temper” was first published in Modern
Review, Vol, I, October 1947, It was written for a European audi-
ence, and appeared in a French translation in the Chromque des
Mtats-Unis, a bi-monthly publication of the American Office of In-
formation m Paris, in April 1947.

The first four parts of “Charles Peirce’s Guesses at the Riddle” were
published under that title in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol XXX,
July 1933. Parts five and six were published m Vol XXXI, 1934,
and part seven in Vol XXXIII, 1936, of the same Jour?iaL

“Charles S, Peirce, Pioneer of Modern Empiricism” was published in
Philosophy of Science, Vol 7, 1940. It was read at the Fifth Inter-
national Congress for the Unity of Science, Harvard University,
Sept, 8, 1939.

“Dewey’s Theory of Natural Science” appeared in the symposium vol-
ume John Dewey: Philosopher of Science and Freedom (edited by
Sidney Hook), New York, The Dial Press, 1950,

“Dewey’s Reconstruction of Logical Theory” appeared in the sym-
posium volume The Philosophy of the Common Man (edited by
Sidney Ratner), New York, G. P, Putnam’s Sons, 1940,

[309]

[ 310 ] Bibliographical Note

Part one of “Reflections on Some Logical and Metaphysical Themes in
Dewey’s Philosophy” appeared in The Journal of Philosophy, VoL
XXXVI, 1939; part two appeared in Voi. XXXIX, 1942, of that
Journal

Part one of “Alfred North Whitehead” appeared in The Nation, VoL
166, 1948; part two appeared m The Symposium, VoL I, July 1930.

“RusseU’s Philosophy of Science” was published in the symposium vol-
ume The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell (edited by Paul Arthur
Schilpp), Evanston and Chicago, Northwestern University, 1944,
and New York, Tudor Publishmg Company.

“Mr. Russell on Meaning and Truth” was published in The Journal of
Philosophy, VoL XXXVEII, 1941.

“The Basis of Human Knowledge” was published in The Nation, VoL
169, 1949.

Part one of “Eddington’s Philosophy of Physical Science” was pub-
lished in The Symposium, VoL I, January 1930;. part two was pub-
lished in The Journal of Philosophy, VoL XXXVII, 1940.

“Probability and the Theory of Knowledge” was published in Philos-
ophy of Science, VoL 6, April 1939. AU but the first paragraph of
the long footnote ro appeared in The Journal of Philosophy, VoL
XL VII, 1950.

“Sovereign Reason” was published in the symposium volume Freedo?n
and Experience (edited by Sidney Hook and Milton R. Konvitz),
Ithaca and New York, Cornell University Press, 1947.

“The Perspectives of Science and the Prospects of Men” was published
in Perspectives USA, Number Seven, Spring 1954.

Acknowledgment for permission to reprint these essays is gratefully
made to the journals and publishers mentioned.

Index

Abstractions, role in knowledge,
22; relation to gross experience,
10, 13, 20, 37, 96, 124, 128, 151 ff.,
171

Abstract universals, 281
Actuality, as mental stuff, 43,

216 ff.

Alcibiades, 274

American philosophy, Chap. 3
Analogy, role in extending appli-
cation of symbols, 303
Ammistic interpretation of nature,

153

Aristotle, 36, 67

Atomic sentences, 196, 199, 201

Ayer, A. J., 192

Bach, J. S., 304
Bacon, Francis, 116
Balfour, Arthur J., 24
Barbarossa, 286

Berkeley, George, 44, 179, 220
Blanshard, Brand, 25n, Chap. 15
Bolzano, B., 96
Boole, George, 92
Bradley, F. H., 156
Brahe, Tycho, 2 38n
Broad, C. D., 293
Brouwer, L. E. J , 59

Campbell, Norman R., 46, i7on,
i86n

Carnap, Rudolf, 46, 95, 188
Cartesian doubt, 67, 93, 202
Categonai analysis, ii, 14, 42
Categories, Peirce's, 60 ff.; White-
head’s, 155 S,

Causal theory, of perception, 173
ff., 191 ff., of truth, 193-7, 201 ff.,
207

Causality, and logical necessity,
287-95

[jti]

[ 312 ]

Certainty, lo, 253 ff., 259 ff., 305;

and inference, 174 ff.

Cohen, M. R., 46, 293
Coherence theory of truth, 270
Common sense, and theoretical
physics, 3B, 48, 102, 104
Common-sensism, critical, 97
Comte, A., 90
Concrete universals, 281
Construction vs, inference, 16 1 ff.,
212

Contextual analysis, 46-9, 105, 143
Contextualistic naturalism, 52-7
Contingency, 63 ff., 87, 149, 276,
295

Continuity, of man and nature, 62
ff., 1 15, 155 ff.

Coulomb, C. D., 240

Darwin, Charles, 297
Darwiman theory, and mechanism,

23

Deductive inference, and causality,
287 ff.

Definitional truths, m physics, 43,
186 ff.

Degree of confirmation, 243 n, 246,
247, 248

Descartes, R., 6on
Descriptive view of science, 300
Determinism, 23

Dewey, John, 14, 16, 46, 93, Chap.
6, Chap. 7, Chap. 8, i73n, i87n,
293, 306

Dialectical materialism, 45-6
Diderot, D., 139
Duhem, P., 15, 46, 76

Eddington, A. S., 38, 42-5, i86n,
i88n, Chap. 13

Einstein, A., 46, 105, 244n, 303
Emergence, 25-6, 65 ff.

Index

Epistemological dualism, 191 ff.,
263

Euclid, 122, 123
Euler, L., 84, 139
Evolutionary biology, 125
Ewing, A. C, 291, 292
Experience, and reason, 120 ff.,
128, 144

Explanation, 24 ff., 29 ff., 66, 269
ff., 304

External world, problem of, 14,
173 ff., 212, 248 ff.

Fallibilism, 70 ff., 83, 97, 130, 306
Formal logic, renaissance of, 122
ff.

Foucault, J. B. L., 9 in
Fourier, no
Frank, Phillip, 90

Galileo, 23, 910, 216, 239, 240, 241
Gauss, K. F., 9 m
Generic and universal proposi-
tions, 144 ff.

Genetic fallacy, 132, 144
Gilson, E., 27, 30
Giotto, 304

Haldane, J. B. S., 46
Hamilton, Wm. R., 163
Harvey, Wm., 116
Hepl, G. W. F., 45, 153
Heisenberg, W., 148, 149
Helmholtz, H., 15
Hempel, C. G., 229n
Hertz, H., 15, 304
Hierarchy of languages, 195
Hilbert, D., 59, 740, 167, 169
Historical materialism, 51
Hooke, Robert, 187
Hosiasson, Janina, 229n
Hume, D., 230, 271
Husserl, E., 59, 6on

Index

Idealistic interpretation of physics,
216 if.

Immediate knowledge, 107, 199 if.,
212 if.

Individual, 275

Individuahty, and physical theory,
148

Induction, 78 if., 213 if., 230, 238 if.
Inducuve inference, and causality,
293 ff.

Inference, 178; its justification, 213
if.

Internal relations, 152, 157 if., 271-

295

James, Wm., 46, 53, 89, 93
Johnson, Dr,, 179, 180
Justification of induction, 98, 214
if , 239 if., 306

Kant, L, 44, 61, 86, 90, 220
Kepler, J., 216, 238n, 239, 241
Keynes, J. M., 80
Kirchhoif, G., 93
Knight, Frank, 32n
Knowledge, immediate, 107, 199,
212, outcome of inquiry, 114,
125; ambiguity of word, 217
Kroner, Richard, 2 on

Lange, F. A., 74
Language and ontology, 208 if.
Laplace, P. S., 238
Laws of nature, as apriori^ 44; as
habits, 67; as fictions, io6j as
conventions, 186 if., 219 if.
Leibniz, G. W. F., 91, 156
Leverrier, U. J, J., 304
Levy, H., 45

Limiting concepts, 109 ff.

Logical constructions, in mathe-

[313]

matics, 162 ff.; in physics, 171 ff.,
179 ff.

Logical forms, as functions in in-
quiry, 130 if., 142
Logical methods, justification of,
127, 132

Logistic thesis, 167 ff.

Lotze, H., 44

Mach, Ernst, 15, 46, 90, 91, 94,
i86n

Maritam, J., 28, 32
Marx, Karl, 45

Mathematics, pure and applied,
162, 223; mterpretanon of, 169
Maxwell, J. C,, 23, 304, 305
McGilvary, E. B., 192
Mead, G. H., 53

Meamng, and rules of usage, 47,
93, 105, criteria of, 93 ff., 242 ff.,
246 ff., 301 ff.

Mechanical categories, 23
Meinong, A., 96
Metaphysics, 12, 27 ff., 86, 154
Mind, and sensory qualities, 19, 21,
103, 134, 193, 218
Mises, Richard von, ypn
Misuses of language, 44, 48, 154,
156-7, 176-7, 180, 222, 261

Naive realism, 107, 19 1
Nature of things, 272-7
Necessary truths, 128 ff., 147
Nelson, E. J., 25 2n
Neurath, Otto, 46
Newton, L, 23, 39, 9in, no, 122,
124, 146, 239, 240, 241, 242n, 297,
304

Non-Euclidean geometry, 123 ff.
Objective relativism, 52 ff.

[314]

Paul, G. A., 192
Parker, D. H., 293
Pearson, Karl, 90

Peirce, C. S., 14, 16, 46, 53, Chap.

4, Chap. 5, 142, 159, 246, 301, 302
Phenomenalism, 204
Philosophy, as commentary on sci-
ence, 36, 51, 298 S.

Philosophy of science, divisions of,
10 ff., and theory of knowledge,
19; as categorial analysis, 38
Physical theory, and gross experi-
ence, 38, 48, 102, 104, 301; and
sensory qualities, 124, 134, 193;
and necessary truth, 187; and
reality, 134; and relations of de-
pendence, 106 ff.; and symbol-
ism, 217

Plato, 36, 153, 156
Poincar^ H., 15, 46, 76, 83
Pointer-readings, 43, 44, 219, 222
Pnnciple of continuity, 40, 56,
62-4

Prmciple of extensive abstraction,
40, 41-2, 186
Pragmatic maxim, 93
Probability, 78-82, 98, 124, 226 ff.,
240 ff.

Process philosophy, 41, 52-7, 153
Pure data, 173 ff.

Quantity, and quality, 20 ff., 43 ff.,
219 ff.

Rationalism, 303 ff.

Rationality, 267 ff., 306
Reality, and sensory qualities,

19 ff.

Reason and experience, 120 ff., 128,
144

Reductive philosophies, 22, 24 ff.,
55 . 1 19

Index

Reichenbach, H., 14, 16, 790, Chap.

14

Relativity theory, 303
Royce, Josiah, 82, 89
Russell, B., 13, 14, 16, 46, 96, 150,
Chap. 10, Chap, ii, Chap. 12,
226

Santayana, George, 59, 6on, 299
Scepticism, and intellectual
change, 125
Schelling, F. W. J., 90
Schiller, F. C. S., i87n
Schopenhauer, A., 220
Science, and art, 304; and society,
12, 17 ff.; and valuation, 32 ff.,
104, 307 ff.; its disparagement,
18, 22, 32 ff.; as common sense,
37, as instrument of control, 38,
45; interpretations of, loi ff.,
296 ff.

Scientific materialism, 39, 15 1-2
Scientific objects, 106-8
Scientific theories, as directives to
action, 108-115; as symbolical,
300 ff.

Sensory qualities, and the world
of physics, 103, 106
Selective subjectivism, 220 ff.
Semantics, 96
Shakespeare, W., 304
Sheldon, W. H., 53
Sheffer, H. M., 84
Speculative philosophy, ii
Spinoza, B., 66, 291
Statistical method, and evolution-
ary growth, 148
Staudt, K. G. C. von, 163
Stebbing, L. Susan, 222
Substance, 183, 204
Sylvester, Benjamin, 83

[ 315 3

Index

Tarski, Alfred, 46, 195

Teleological view of nature, 152
ff., 159 S.

Theory of knowledge, and dispar-
agement of science, 19 if.

Tomier, E., 79n

Truth, criteria of, 129, 206 if.

Ultimate causes, 30

Ultimate simples, 181

Universals, and internal relations,
280-6

Values, and science, 32 if., 104,
307 S.

Venn, John, 79, 84
Verifiability principle of, 95, 246 fi,
Vienna Circle, 90

Weierstrass, Karl, 163
Weight, as surrogate for trath,
227 ff., 235 if.

Weyl, H., 169, i7on
Wheelwright, Philip 2on
Whitehead, A. R, 13, 14, 16, zSn,
38, 39 ff., 49, 59, 83, Chap. 9, 183.
185

Whittaker, Edmund T., 113
Wittgenstein, L., 46, 59
Woodger, J. H., 46